MWC: a really-really great e-paper & WindowsCE- based (!) phone & reader from Polymer Vision: Readius – the first foldab

You may already have heard of the really revolutionary E Lnk e-paper and the dedicated book readers using it. The most important in-production ones are, currently, as follows. (If interested, see the full list / a full comparison chart HERE; note that the matrix doesn’t contain the very important effective resolution; I’ve fixed this in the short listing below as the value after the slash. Note that, in order for quick accessibility, I’ve also listed the grayscale levels supported in here too.)

iRex iLiad - in my opinion, the best ebook reader, mostly because of its high-resolution (XGA,1024*768) screen and the quality material. (resolution: XGA / no effective resolution given (but, in Landscape mode, it’s only a little bit narrower than 1024 pixel); 16 grayscale)

Sony LIBRIé (resolution: SVGA / 754 x 584, 4 grayscale)

Sony Reader PRS-500/505 (a somewhat enhanced LIBRIé for the U.S. market; it’s smaller (no keyboard) and features a dual Memory Stick PRO Duo/SD slot to augment the memory) (resolution: SVGA / 754 x 584, 4/8 grayscale in 500/505)

Cybook Gen3 (resolution: SVGA / no effective resolution given, 4 grayscale)

And the latest device, the much-criticized Amazon Kindle (resolution: SVGA / 450x550; 4 grayscale)

Now, there’s a new player on the scene: Polymer Vision.

They have demoed a very promising prototype of their phone + reader combo called Readius. Some shots (all taken by me) follow:

Why you may be interested? I’ve talked to the Polymer Vision folks and found out the following:

In addition to the great capabilities, the foldability etc, it has another feature to show off with: being WindowsCE-based (while all the other book readers are built strictly on Linux). This means that, while it won’t directly run Windows Mobile applications (without some hacking, at least), Windows Mobile developers will have an easy time recompiling their applications to support the new device. This, among other things, means we may easily receive, for example, CHM support, which is, currently (as far as other, e-paper-based readers are concerned), only supported by the, otherwise, at least in my opinion, not really outstanding two HanLin eBook (not listed in the above list) versions.

As it’s in CHM that most technical literature, manuals etc. come, it’s very important to have a reader supporting it (if you’re into reading manuals, tutorials, tech e-books this way, that is). If the Windows Mobile developers actively involved in developing CHM readers (most importantly, MicroOLAP) port their reader(s) to the new device, it’ll become a real killer, an irresistible device.

Being based on WindowsCE is just one of the advantages of this device – there are several other advantages as well. First, it has a fully usable phone (!). Second, it has 3G support which, by default, is used to access their portal server to download new contents from. Their portal server looks like as follows:

While, by default, it doesn’t contain a Web browser, the device is not protected from third-party applications accessing the Web – or, for that matter, the Net. That is, the GPRS / 3G connection can also be used to anything and isn’t just restricted to accessing their portal server. This means the device has a lot of potential – as a generic communicator / connected device.

Resolution: still to be improved

Note that the currently available specs of Readius don’t mention several important things. First, the device is (currently) able to read PDF docs as well. As its (current) effective screen resolution is about 350*280 only (I’m only sure about the horizontal, 350, resolution), however, you’ll have a hard time reading non-reformatted PDF files. In this respect, it’s (still) worse than even the, in this respect, worst Amazon Kindle, which only uses 450x550 pixels as the active display area. The Polymer Vision folks do promise the final version will have a much(?) higher-resolution screen.

When will it arrive?

They promised a product launch in the second half of this year. They haven’t mentioned any price; based on their defining the reader as a high-end reader, it can’t be very cheap. However, if it does deliver, the folding mechanism and the screen turn out to be durable and there will be third-party support (which is pretty much likely with WinCE), I think it’ll be a killer.

UPDATE (02/19/2008): THIS ZDNet article may also be of interest.