9 ms·

Sony releases the Holy Grail: A flexible e-ink screen

94 points by techiemonkey 13y ago

logfromblammo 13y ago
At $8.95 apiece, $1100 can buy you 122 mass-market paperbacks. I certainly hope that someone can bring that retail price down a fair chunk, or this tech is not going far.
- Zikes 13y ago
  Many new technologies are prohibitively expensive, but we have to start somewhere.
  - thorntonbf 13y ago
    Can we really call this new technology? I get it that it's a new iteration of eInk technology, but it doesn't seem that Sony is really taking advantage of any of the advances with this implementation. As much as I really want to get excited about this, I just don't see anything here that really does it for me. As much as I think Amazon needs some competition, I'd love to see them take a swing at this concept with a Kindle - "Technical Edition". While I'd love to see some openness and extensibility via an SDK, I think if you get the price point right, it doesn't much matter. A sub $300 A4 or Letter sized device with the ability to read major document formats, annotate notes and maybe offer a digital note taking solution would be a dream. But, at $1,100 this is nothing but a interesting but wholly irrelevant spectacle from a company that is rapidly trending in the same direction.
- rch 13y ago
  I'm in the market. At one point I tried a Logitech Io2, even though I knew it was too awkward to really work. At this price point lifetime is what I'm looking for; a moleskine replacement that could last 6-10 years would be interesting to me, even if it isn't perfect (refresh rates, and so on). Of course data accessibility is a concern with Sony too.
- necubi 13y ago
  This is not meant for reading paperbacks. A kindle paperwhite, at $120, is a far better choice for that. This is for reading and annotating documents, and generally replacing paper in an office or academic setting. Given then number of research papers I've printed out (thousands and thousands of pages), I can see a huge use for this. It may still not be cost effective, but is still much more environmentally friendly and saves the hassle of keeping track of all of that paper. The paperless office has been an idea for several decades, but without devices like this that allow easy reading and annotation, we haven't been able to get there.
  - toomuchtodo 13y ago
    YES! This replaces your legal/letter notepad your drag meeting to meeting, not your Kindle.
    - leoc 13y ago
      Apparently Sony's going to a legal-technology trade show to pitch this to wealthy legal firms.
      - anigbrowl 13y ago
        No need to be a wealthy law firm. $1100 for an obviously deductible business expense isn't much, about the same as a quality laptop (and far less than what people used to pay for a quality laptop). You'll see people using these on CSI or some other legal-themed network TV show before the end of the year, possibly even the end of this season. If I was a TV show producer I'd be on the phone to Sony right now begging for two of them - one for the TV lawyers to use on screen, and one for me to mark up scripts on.
        toomuchtodo 13y ago
        > If I was a TV show producer I'd be on the phone to Sony right now begging for two of them - one for the TV lawyers to use on screen, and one for me to mark up scripts on. Bones. I expect to see this on Bones shortly.
- devindotcom 13y ago
  You can get an e-reader for around $40 these days. This is a one of a kind specialty product.
  - dragonwriter 13y ago
    > You can get an e-reader for around $40 these days. Yeah, but you can't get a letter-sized eink reader for around $40.
bashcoder 13y ago
Meanwhile, today I get an email from Sony saying that their Reader store closed on March 20, and that it has ceded its customers to Kobo, which spawned from Canada's Chapters Indigo. [0] While this tech may be notable, Sony continues to have a fatally misaligned device/content strategy. [0] http://www.kobobooks.com/SonyMigrate http://www.kobobooks.com/SonyMigrate
- lignuist 13y ago
  What is wrong with just offering a reader without forcing its users to also buy the books from the same source? I own a Sony reader and I actually enjoy that it is not tightly bundled with a bookstore.
  - bashcoder 13y ago
    Sure - and I think Sony e-readers were even among the first to allow side-loading of non-DRM ebooks. The problem is the economics. There just haven't been financially successful examples of standalone readers, and Sony has been no exception. Amazon can offer cheap Kindles because they can sell ebooks onto the devices directly and make money from content. Apple can charge more for their books because people are bought-in to their iPad investment, and because competitors have to pay Apple 30% to sell directly on to an iOS device. Sony, meanwhile, continues to fail to bring an integrated value proposition to the market. Everything with them involves friction, compared to the competition. Last time I was at CES, I couldn't even find a Sony reader in their booth.
ben174 13y ago
Still in major need of a refresh rate boost. Especially with stylus input. It would be near-impossible to write at a reasonable speed when the screen takes so long to refresh.
- jamesmiller5 13y ago
  I was pretty upset with it's performance as a writing pad, having 100ms response times, maybe even higher. Even if I didn't have 3 week battery, I'd prefer <35ms draw times so it feels 1-to-1 with the input.
johnduhart 13y ago
Is there a source for this that isn't blogspam?
- scholia 13y ago
  http://www.worldox.com/news/sony-digital-paper-worldox http://www.worldox.com/news/sony-digital-paper-worldox and http://www.sony.com/digitalpaper http://www.sony.com/digitalpaper
psc 13y ago
This technology is really cool, too bad it seems like there wasn't much thought put into making an appealing product out of it. Just imagine how much more you could do with a flexible display, rather than just reading PDFs and writing notes. From the video, the UI looks mediocre, and this is just a guess, but I wouldn't expect the software to be great. It feels like Sony just wrapped up a really cool hardware prototype in a shell and decided to sell it, but the whole thing lacks any sort of polish. I can't wait for someone who cares about the details of a product to get a hold of flexible e-ink screens.
kliao 13y ago
wait, this device is literally flexible as in bendable like paper? that's what the article makes it sound like, but it doesn't seem to be true based on the product page: http://pro.sony.com/bbsc/ssr/cat-digitalpaper/cat-digitalpapersub/product-DPTS1/ http://pro.sony.com/bbsc/ssr/cat-digitalpaper/cat-digitalpap...
- shawn-furyan 13y ago
  I think that it's the display that's flexible, not the device. I suppose that you could potentially do a Chromecast style computer in a kind of bump enclosure at the bottom of the back of the display to retain flexibility (though I don't think that there's enough detail to determine if there are other issues with such an approach). They however seem to be using a traditional rigid enclosure for the prototype.
devindotcom 13y ago
Not really, I've played with one an the enclosure is pretty rigid. It flexes but it's not like you can fold it and half and then smooth it out. I'm still waiting on that. Also the resolution leaves something to be desired at that size.
- derefr 13y ago
  Would the best analogy be something like a 5.25" floppy, where it wiggles a bit but bending it into a U-shape would wreck it?
  - devindotcom 13y ago
    This is much thicker than that. No, if I remember correctly it's really more like a large, thin hardback, like a children's book. Sorry I can't be more specific, I only held it for a few moments, and they could easily have altered the design or simply had an old prototype out.
- 6d0debc071 13y ago
  I suspect they meant flexible in the usability sense rather than in the physical sense :/
- Retric 13y ago
  Having busted e readers before; being able to flex a little probably does wonders for it's survivability. Light weight + thin + rigid is just a dangerous combo.
dwb 13y ago
I don't understand why a flexible e-ink screen is desirable if its cost doesn't approach that of paper – and it's safe to say it won't for a very long time. If it's (relatively) expensive, you want to reuse it, and so it will need a rigid enclosure. Apart from bending around shallow radiuses for gently curved displays and the like, am I having a failure of imagination?
- anigbrowl 13y ago
  Imagine you already deal with a great amount of paper by necessity. You can put it in a binder, bend it out of the way to get at physical documents behind it, use it as a live index to other things and so on. It would be perfect for lawyers in court, where you don't necessarily wish to have a laptop on the table r a device that you hold up, but you do have to deal with massive amounts of paper and would like an electronic tool that substituted/integrated as seamlessly as possible into that environment.
arjn 13y ago
This is just an initial release/prototype. Pretty sure it will improve with time. Glad to see Sony breaking new ground and also glad that e-ink technology is improving.
- scholia 13y ago
  No, it's being offered for sale....
  - sukuriant 13y ago
    So is the Rift
    - nezza-_- 13y ago
      The Rift devkit.
scarmig 13y ago
Attach it to a keyboard. Screen is big enough to code at the beach. Isn't what I wanted Mirasol to be, but looks like a damn fine refinement of e-ink.
- guidopallemans 13y ago
  sand in the keyboard though...
  - rectangletangle 13y ago
    Hook up one of those new projected keyboards, and I think it'll be ready.
  - CountingCode 13y ago
    Silicone keyboard covers.
- jboggan 13y ago
  I really, really want a beach laptop. The ultimate accessory for Silicon Beach. I've looked into rigging up my own with leftover Pixel Qi demo screens and older netbooks but I haven't had the time. Someone please liberate us from coding indoors!
udev 13y ago
This might be very useful for reading academic papers, because most of the time people scribble notes while reading. It's funny how having solved the battery problem (3 weeks on one charge), they still can't solve the speed problem (1 sec to refresh the page).
tenfingers 13y ago
I actually want/need a digital sketchpad, and while I do read/annotate PDFs, this is not what I would do the majority of the time. If this device would be hackable (run linux on it), I would find so many use cases for it that I could justify the price in a heartbeat. Somehow, being a device from Sony, I expect this reader to be a piece of junk software-wise, to the point that I wouldn't be surprised that you need to convert the PDF into something else and use custom clients just to exchange files. I hope I will be wrong.
- joshvm 13y ago
  If you want a cheap digital sketchpad, look at the Boogie Board LCD slates. They're nowhere near as good as a proper graphics tablet, but you can draw and save stuff on them. High end model is around $100, other models more like $30.
  - tenfingers 13y ago
    I really want an e-ink screen, otherwise paper is still a better option for me. Price is not really an issue if the screen delivers.
dorkrawk 13y ago
This looks awesome. I love the ability to write on e-ink. But is flexibility a feature or a bug of paper? What is the benefit of a non-rigid e-ink display for these types of use cases?
- lando2319 13y ago
  > But is flexibility a feature or a bug of paper? This is interesting. I hadn't thought of it from this perspective. If perhaps, down the line of course, you could roll it up like a taquito then you could put it in your pocket.
mdip 13y ago
As I've been reading the coverage of this product throughout the day, the price seems to be the biggest drawback everyone focuses on, and I agree that $1100 is overpriced for what this product is offering. I got the sense from several articles that $1100 would be way overpriced for any e-reader. Because of the huge number of PDF files in larger paper sizes that I have, I'd happily pay $1500 for this if in addition to it's features it: 1. wasn't made by Sony, 2. was color (to about early 1990s Newspaper quality), 3. was unlocked (different OS could be installed, etc)
- arjn 13y ago
  I wonder if the $1100 price is for the dev kit and not an actual retail product.
  - scholia 13y ago
    It's not a retail product, it's a professional product. Sony hasn't launched it in the US, it's being imported by Worldox, which is targeting lawyers etc. http://www.worldox.com/news/sony-digital-paper-worldox http://www.worldox.com/news/sony-digital-paper-worldox I wonder if people would be better informed if there were more professional journalists and not as many crappy blogs...
    - bashcoder 13y ago
      This tech, and that business plan, is nothing new. Plastic Logic aimed squarely at the professional market with a flexible e-ink reader that debuted at CES 2009. [0] It hasn't worked out so well for them. I visited their booth in 2009, and they showed a large flexible screen housed in a rigid case. It was to be the advent of flexible e-ink, and the beginning of a new era. Eventually, their announced content partners fell through, and despite an initial splash it never really materialized. Plastic Logic did launch in the US, but shut down their US ops in 2012. [1] They are still a going concern, however, and still focusing on the business market. [0] http://www.slashgear.com/plastic-logic-que-wireless-ebook-reader-gets-ces-launch-1860791/ http://www.slashgear.com/plastic-logic-que-wireless-ebook-re... [1] http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/1a08be60-9eba-11e1-9cc8-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2xIqqDuRH http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/1a08be60-9eba-11e1-9cc8-00144...
leoc 13y ago
1200×1600 greyscale and 13.3" is great, but I feel that 'flexible' is a lower priority than 'not $1100'.
- riffraff 13y ago
  that is only if you haven't broken a few e-ink screens already :) As soon as I saw this I thought "no way anyone sensible is buying this, it will break in a week". Factoring this in, a rigid screen would have probably meant "unsellable".
  - TillE 13y ago
    Use a case? Include a free fake leather case with every purchase? I've had zero problems with my Kindle screens, but I've never dropped them.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
TrainedMonkey 13y ago
It does not matter how much it costs now. Simple facts that it is possible and technology to produce it exists are important. Within a few years economy of scale and technology optimizations will bring flexible e-ink at affordable price.
- rectangletangle 13y ago
  This, technology always starts out expensive and impractical. Through mass production and refinement, it becomes practical and useful. Now that it's confirmed possible and somewhat practical, more funding and research is likely to be directed toward it.
  - CountingCode 13y ago
    It's funny, almost every argument against this e-reader I've read here today I also read when sony released it's first e-reader, well in advance of the kindle. I bought it anyway and had no regrets.
rectangletangle 13y ago
Wow, that's cool as hell. Even though it's $1100, it's new technology, and subsequent iterations will likely be much cheaper (and will probably have support for color).
caiob 13y ago
How exactly is this a MVP?

94 points by techiemonkey 13y ago

At $8.95 apiece, $1100 can buy you 122 mass-market paperbacks. I certainly hope that someone can bring that retail price down a fair chunk, or this tech is not going far.

Zikes 13y ago
Many new technologies are prohibitively expensive, but we have to start somewhere.
- thorntonbf 13y ago
  Can we really call this new technology? I get it that it's a new iteration of eInk technology, but it doesn't seem that Sony is really taking advantage of any of the advances with this implementation. As much as I really want to get excited about this, I just don't see anything here that really does it for me. As much as I think Amazon needs some competition, I'd love to see them take a swing at this concept with a Kindle - "Technical Edition". While I'd love to see some openness and extensibility via an SDK, I think if you get the price point right, it doesn't much matter. A sub $300 A4 or Letter sized device with the ability to read major document formats, annotate notes and maybe offer a digital note taking solution would be a dream. But, at $1,100 this is nothing but a interesting but wholly irrelevant spectacle from a company that is rapidly trending in the same direction.
rch 13y ago
I'm in the market. At one point I tried a Logitech Io2, even though I knew it was too awkward to really work. At this price point lifetime is what I'm looking for; a moleskine replacement that could last 6-10 years would be interesting to me, even if it isn't perfect (refresh rates, and so on). Of course data accessibility is a concern with Sony too.
necubi 13y ago
This is not meant for reading paperbacks. A kindle paperwhite, at $120, is a far better choice for that. This is for reading and annotating documents, and generally replacing paper in an office or academic setting. Given then number of research papers I've printed out (thousands and thousands of pages), I can see a huge use for this. It may still not be cost effective, but is still much more environmentally friendly and saves the hassle of keeping track of all of that paper. The paperless office has been an idea for several decades, but without devices like this that allow easy reading and annotation, we haven't been able to get there.
- toomuchtodo 13y ago
  YES! This replaces your legal/letter notepad your drag meeting to meeting, not your Kindle.
  - leoc 13y ago
    Apparently Sony's going to a legal-technology trade show to pitch this to wealthy legal firms.
    - anigbrowl 13y ago
      No need to be a wealthy law firm. $1100 for an obviously deductible business expense isn't much, about the same as a quality laptop (and far less than what people used to pay for a quality laptop). You'll see people using these on CSI or some other legal-themed network TV show before the end of the year, possibly even the end of this season. If I was a TV show producer I'd be on the phone to Sony right now begging for two of them - one for the TV lawyers to use on screen, and one for me to mark up scripts on.
      - toomuchtodo 13y ago
        > If I was a TV show producer I'd be on the phone to Sony right now begging for two of them - one for the TV lawyers to use on screen, and one for me to mark up scripts on. Bones. I expect to see this on Bones shortly.
devindotcom 13y ago
You can get an e-reader for around $40 these days. This is a one of a kind specialty product.
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  > You can get an e-reader for around $40 these days. Yeah, but you can't get a letter-sized eink reader for around $40.

bashcoder 13y ago

Meanwhile, today I get an email from Sony saying that their Reader store closed on March 20, and that it has ceded its customers to Kobo, which spawned from Canada's Chapters Indigo. [0] While this tech may be notable, Sony continues to have a fatally misaligned device/content strategy. [0] http://www.kobobooks.com/SonyMigrate http://www.kobobooks.com/SonyMigrate

lignuist 13y ago
What is wrong with just offering a reader without forcing its users to also buy the books from the same source? I own a Sony reader and I actually enjoy that it is not tightly bundled with a bookstore.
- bashcoder 13y ago
  Sure - and I think Sony e-readers were even among the first to allow side-loading of non-DRM ebooks. The problem is the economics. There just haven't been financially successful examples of standalone readers, and Sony has been no exception. Amazon can offer cheap Kindles because they can sell ebooks onto the devices directly and make money from content. Apple can charge more for their books because people are bought-in to their iPad investment, and because competitors have to pay Apple 30% to sell directly on to an iOS device. Sony, meanwhile, continues to fail to bring an integrated value proposition to the market. Everything with them involves friction, compared to the competition. Last time I was at CES, I couldn't even find a Sony reader in their booth.

ben174 13y ago

Still in major need of a refresh rate boost. Especially with stylus input. It would be near-impossible to write at a reasonable speed when the screen takes so long to refresh.

jamesmiller5 13y ago
I was pretty upset with it's performance as a writing pad, having 100ms response times, maybe even higher. Even if I didn't have 3 week battery, I'd prefer <35ms draw times so it feels 1-to-1 with the input.

johnduhart 13y ago

Is there a source for this that isn't blogspam?

scholia 13y ago
http://www.worldox.com/news/sony-digital-paper-worldox http://www.worldox.com/news/sony-digital-paper-worldox and http://www.sony.com/digitalpaper http://www.sony.com/digitalpaper

psc 13y ago

This technology is really cool, too bad it seems like there wasn't much thought put into making an appealing product out of it. Just imagine how much more you could do with a flexible display, rather than just reading PDFs and writing notes. From the video, the UI looks mediocre, and this is just a guess, but I wouldn't expect the software to be great. It feels like Sony just wrapped up a really cool hardware prototype in a shell and decided to sell it, but the whole thing lacks any sort of polish. I can't wait for someone who cares about the details of a product to get a hold of flexible e-ink screens.

kliao 13y ago

wait, this device is literally flexible as in bendable like paper? that's what the article makes it sound like, but it doesn't seem to be true based on the product page: http://pro.sony.com/bbsc/ssr/cat-digitalpaper/cat-digitalpapersub/product-DPTS1/ http://pro.sony.com/bbsc/ssr/cat-digitalpaper/cat-digitalpap...

shawn-furyan 13y ago
I think that it's the display that's flexible, not the device. I suppose that you could potentially do a Chromecast style computer in a kind of bump enclosure at the bottom of the back of the display to retain flexibility (though I don't think that there's enough detail to determine if there are other issues with such an approach). They however seem to be using a traditional rigid enclosure for the prototype.

devindotcom 13y ago

Not really, I've played with one an the enclosure is pretty rigid. It flexes but it's not like you can fold it and half and then smooth it out. I'm still waiting on that. Also the resolution leaves something to be desired at that size.

derefr 13y ago
Would the best analogy be something like a 5.25" floppy, where it wiggles a bit but bending it into a U-shape would wreck it?
- devindotcom 13y ago
  This is much thicker than that. No, if I remember correctly it's really more like a large, thin hardback, like a children's book. Sorry I can't be more specific, I only held it for a few moments, and they could easily have altered the design or simply had an old prototype out.
6d0debc071 13y ago
I suspect they meant flexible in the usability sense rather than in the physical sense :/
Retric 13y ago
Having busted e readers before; being able to flex a little probably does wonders for it's survivability. Light weight + thin + rigid is just a dangerous combo.

dwb 13y ago

I don't understand why a flexible e-ink screen is desirable if its cost doesn't approach that of paper – and it's safe to say it won't for a very long time. If it's (relatively) expensive, you want to reuse it, and so it will need a rigid enclosure. Apart from bending around shallow radiuses for gently curved displays and the like, am I having a failure of imagination?

anigbrowl 13y ago
Imagine you already deal with a great amount of paper by necessity. You can put it in a binder, bend it out of the way to get at physical documents behind it, use it as a live index to other things and so on. It would be perfect for lawyers in court, where you don't necessarily wish to have a laptop on the table r a device that you hold up, but you do have to deal with massive amounts of paper and would like an electronic tool that substituted/integrated as seamlessly as possible into that environment.

arjn 13y ago

This is just an initial release/prototype. Pretty sure it will improve with time. Glad to see Sony breaking new ground and also glad that e-ink technology is improving.

scholia 13y ago
No, it's being offered for sale....
- sukuriant 13y ago
  So is the Rift
  - nezza-_- 13y ago
    The Rift devkit.

scarmig 13y ago

Attach it to a keyboard. Screen is big enough to code at the beach. Isn't what I wanted Mirasol to be, but looks like a damn fine refinement of e-ink.

guidopallemans 13y ago
sand in the keyboard though...
- rectangletangle 13y ago
  Hook up one of those new projected keyboards, and I think it'll be ready.
- CountingCode 13y ago
  Silicone keyboard covers.
jboggan 13y ago
I really, really want a beach laptop. The ultimate accessory for Silicon Beach. I've looked into rigging up my own with leftover Pixel Qi demo screens and older netbooks but I haven't had the time. Someone please liberate us from coding indoors!

udev 13y ago

This might be very useful for reading academic papers, because most of the time people scribble notes while reading. It's funny how having solved the battery problem (3 weeks on one charge), they still can't solve the speed problem (1 sec to refresh the page).

tenfingers 13y ago

I actually want/need a digital sketchpad, and while I do read/annotate PDFs, this is not what I would do the majority of the time. If this device would be hackable (run linux on it), I would find so many use cases for it that I could justify the price in a heartbeat. Somehow, being a device from Sony, I expect this reader to be a piece of junk software-wise, to the point that I wouldn't be surprised that you need to convert the PDF into something else and use custom clients just to exchange files. I hope I will be wrong.

joshvm 13y ago
If you want a cheap digital sketchpad, look at the Boogie Board LCD slates. They're nowhere near as good as a proper graphics tablet, but you can draw and save stuff on them. High end model is around $100, other models more like $30.
- tenfingers 13y ago
  I really want an e-ink screen, otherwise paper is still a better option for me. Price is not really an issue if the screen delivers.

dorkrawk 13y ago

This looks awesome. I love the ability to write on e-ink. But is flexibility a feature or a bug of paper? What is the benefit of a non-rigid e-ink display for these types of use cases?

lando2319 13y ago
> But is flexibility a feature or a bug of paper? This is interesting. I hadn't thought of it from this perspective. If perhaps, down the line of course, you could roll it up like a taquito then you could put it in your pocket.

mdip 13y ago

As I've been reading the coverage of this product throughout the day, the price seems to be the biggest drawback everyone focuses on, and I agree that $1100 is overpriced for what this product is offering. I got the sense from several articles that $1100 would be way overpriced for any e-reader. Because of the huge number of PDF files in larger paper sizes that I have, I'd happily pay $1500 for this if in addition to it's features it: 1. wasn't made by Sony, 2. was color (to about early 1990s Newspaper quality), 3. was unlocked (different OS could be installed, etc)

arjn 13y ago
I wonder if the $1100 price is for the dev kit and not an actual retail product.
- scholia 13y ago
  It's not a retail product, it's a professional product. Sony hasn't launched it in the US, it's being imported by Worldox, which is targeting lawyers etc. http://www.worldox.com/news/sony-digital-paper-worldox http://www.worldox.com/news/sony-digital-paper-worldox I wonder if people would be better informed if there were more professional journalists and not as many crappy blogs...
  - bashcoder 13y ago
    This tech, and that business plan, is nothing new. Plastic Logic aimed squarely at the professional market with a flexible e-ink reader that debuted at CES 2009. [0] It hasn't worked out so well for them. I visited their booth in 2009, and they showed a large flexible screen housed in a rigid case. It was to be the advent of flexible e-ink, and the beginning of a new era. Eventually, their announced content partners fell through, and despite an initial splash it never really materialized. Plastic Logic did launch in the US, but shut down their US ops in 2012. [1] They are still a going concern, however, and still focusing on the business market. [0] http://www.slashgear.com/plastic-logic-que-wireless-ebook-reader-gets-ces-launch-1860791/ http://www.slashgear.com/plastic-logic-que-wireless-ebook-re... [1] http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/1a08be60-9eba-11e1-9cc8-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2xIqqDuRH http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/1a08be60-9eba-11e1-9cc8-00144...

leoc 13y ago

1200×1600 greyscale and 13.3" is great, but I feel that 'flexible' is a lower priority than 'not $1100'.

riffraff 13y ago
that is only if you haven't broken a few e-ink screens already :) As soon as I saw this I thought "no way anyone sensible is buying this, it will break in a week". Factoring this in, a rigid screen would have probably meant "unsellable".
- TillE 13y ago
  Use a case? Include a free fake leather case with every purchase? I've had zero problems with my Kindle screens, but I've never dropped them.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

TrainedMonkey 13y ago

It does not matter how much it costs now. Simple facts that it is possible and technology to produce it exists are important. Within a few years economy of scale and technology optimizations will bring flexible e-ink at affordable price.

rectangletangle 13y ago
This, technology always starts out expensive and impractical. Through mass production and refinement, it becomes practical and useful. Now that it's confirmed possible and somewhat practical, more funding and research is likely to be directed toward it.
- CountingCode 13y ago
  It's funny, almost every argument against this e-reader I've read here today I also read when sony released it's first e-reader, well in advance of the kindle. I bought it anyway and had no regrets.

rectangletangle 13y ago

Wow, that's cool as hell. Even though it's $1100, it's new technology, and subsequent iterations will likely be much cheaper (and will probably have support for color).

caiob 13y ago

How exactly is this a MVP?