I’m a little surprised to see the Readius product nearing ‘availability so quickly. It has been demo’d before but this time, they’re talking prices and timescales!

It’s black and white, has the typical slow refresh rate of e-ink display, has GSM voice capability, mini SD card slot, MP3 playback capability and the software supports static page formats like RSS and e-books. It weighs 115gm and is based on an ARM11 processor at 400Mhz running a Linux kernel.

Will hit stores in mid-2008.

Reuters reports that it will cost as much as a high-end smartphone. Quite what that means is anyone’s guess but don’t expect it to be cheap!

Lets imagine this in the future.2009: faster refresh rate, better contrast? 2010: Thinner, refresh rate for video?  2011 Economies of scale reached for mass market B&W browsing and media? 2012 Colour. 2013 Touch? Touch! Wow, I can’t imagine how they will manage to integrate a touch layer in this and keep it reliable!

It will be a while before we see this in the mass market but it will be an important one to watch over the coming years.

Polymer Vision will be at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in Feb so expect to see more news then.

Source: Reuters