Subway rider’s delight? ‘Polymer Vision: Rollable e-paper is finally on the roll’
Mike Cane, our link Santa, lives in New York. Hey, Mike, as a straphanger—you’re not into limos, are you?—just what do you think of the current and future specs for the Polymer Vision Readius?
This compact handheld holds the promise of becoming a subway rider’s delight for book and newspaper reading. At least that’s my impression from afar, if PV can keep improving the Readius. Details:
- Present samples not functional. Commercial launch next year. First customer will be an Italian telecommunications company.
- Screen now five inches. “For truly mobile usage (pocket-size device) we think 8-9″ is the sweet spot to be working on.” Monochrome reflective. 4:3 aspect. QVGA res with 16 grey scales. 10:1 contrast and 35 percent reflectivity. Updates at half a second to a second.
- “The user (via a PC application) will be able to download content to the device and configure the types of favorite info he/she would like to be updated about when on the move (e.g., RSS feeds).”
- 4GB minimum storage.
- 3G connection. Kindle-easy downloads of e-books coming in time?
- Dimensions: 100 mm x 55.6 mm x 21 mm (l x w x h)
- Weight: 150 gram
- Supports: RSS feeds, PDF’s, e-books, e-mail and other text files. Including HTML.
- Dimensions of 100 mm x 55.6 mm x 21 mm (l x w x h).
- Weight: 150 gram
Big thanks to MobileRead. More details here. Also see press release announcing volume production and a PV rep’s answers to readers’ questions (source of the quote on screen size). Yes, the Readius was supposed to appear in ‘07, not in ‘08, but it would seem to be worth waiting for, especially if screen res and refresh rates can eventually improve.
So, gang, what do you think? What’ll it take for you to buy a Readius? Or do you want one now?
The inevitable Kindle angle: If nothing else, this gizmo, in a perfected form, could give the Kindle a fit. See the risk of building the e-book world around one bleeping machine?
We need e-book standards that will work on many readers. Let’s look ahead beyond the current Kindle craze; what happened to the media’s Sony fixation? While I’ll keep writing about the Kindle—lots of myths to refute, both pro- and anti-K—there’s a lot more to e-bookdom than Gadget K
Related: Coming up in the next day or two will be some thoughts on small e-publishers who are also doing P, especially Twilight Times Books. This is an example of the kind of story that the @$#@# Kindle forced us to put on hold, because people were talking and writing about nothing else.
December 16th, 2007 at 1:52 pm
[...] Original post by TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home [...]
December 16th, 2007 at 6:52 pm
This looks interesting and I like the fact that it supports formats for much of the free content on the web and could also be used for reading reports or other business use. This alone may give it an edge into the corporate/educational market. And this market is BIG. Try asking your boss to buy you a “book reader”, now try asking for a “report and price list reader”. Get the picture?
December 16th, 2007 at 7:37 pm
I still think screen size is going to be an issue. I don’t want to be sitting there on the subway and messing around with a scroll wheel trying to see a whole newspaper page. If we can really have a flexible, foldable screen, why not make it the size of a real page?
December 16th, 2007 at 8:22 pm
I don’t think you can have it real A4/letter size, because it only rolls in one direction, which would make the rolled version around 8.x by 3.x inches. That’s a bit long for most pockets if you’re going for portability.
December 17th, 2007 at 1:43 am
I like this technology, but I would prefer using a rigid reader until bigger sizes are manufactured, then I will be in like rat up a drain pipe.
Dhamu I would not mind if it were a too long for the pocket, a decent size screens matter more to me, after all I carry books all the time(A4 210×297mm) - which probably means 240 long or 9.4 inches (guessing at 1.5mm borders, so maybe even longer again).
An A5 scrolled version is a bit long 14.8 + 3, 17.8 cm or 7 inches.
But I agree, I cannot see how it could be folded up bi-directionally. Mind you it could fit into a handbag, or clip onto a belt without much difficulty at the sizes mentioned above.
The other alternative is to make it more scroll-like, a column of print, twice as long as it wide, might be persuasive (awkward to hold I suspect).
My problem is I read quite quickly, hence small screens present problem, I need quite a lot of text in view for comfortable reading.
However I like this technology, and I would buy a variety of sizes in it for different reading purposes.
December 17th, 2007 at 2:27 am
Wake me when they actually ship to customers…
December 17th, 2007 at 9:18 am
i’m curious to see a price. i’m happy to see PDF support, though. maybe it will be mac compatible, too? i would faint!