Color is here. Just a few months after completing tests in a Japanese cafe, Fujitsu has announced plans to release the world’s first color e-reader on April 20.
The announcement bites into the heels of the Kindle 2 and gobbles some buzz from the Plastic Logic Reader, but FLEPia’s high price tag and lagging page turns might slow the color revolution hype.
Cash Rules Everything Around Me
First, let’s talk pricing. The FLEPia is a cool $1,000, just shy of triple the cost of the Kindle 2. It’s also slower that the Kindle, if you’re using it in full color mode. Set it to 260,000 colors and you’re facing an eight-second turn time over three scans. Drop down to two scans and you’re still dealing with a five-second redraw. The redraw time for 1 scan (64 colors), is 1.8 seconds.
The device’s vibrancy has improved, and Fujitsu has already made improvements from its beta days. According to company Spokesperson Archie Mochizuki, the current Flepia is 1.5 times brighter and 1.7 times faster than the commercial samples. Early screen shots show the device is a big improvement over the Beta product, which didn’t appear to be that vibrant or bright. The pictures we’ve seen of the demo device seem to lack in contrast and color saturation.
Bistable Display Technology
Like all e-paper products, the Fujitsu FLEPia uses a bistable display technology. Fujitsu claims that a key advantage of its e-paper is the semi-permanent memory display system, which maintains the image without power; the absence of flicker; and the color is three times as bright as other developed products.
Spec It Out
As for specs, the FLEPia connects via Bluetooth and high-speed wireless, and supports USB2.0 with a SD memory slot for temporary memory. Stereo speakers are embedded into the device.
The FLEPia has an astounding 40-hour average battery life and a large, thin display (in this case, an 8-inch screen and approximately 2.5mm thick base). By comparison, the Kindle can run as long as 96 hours with its wireless radio turned off. The screen on the FLEPia can be navigated via touchscreen , as well as through the scroll key and six function buttons. The FLEPia supports the .book and XMDF ebook formats and runs on Windows CE 5.0. There’s no mention of support for .opf, .pdf, Microsoft Word, HTML, or CBR/CBZ containers.
Sounds slick, but can Fujitsu meet its sales of goal 50,000 units by the end of 2010? At that price point and in this consumer economy, it seems like a lofty goal and one has to question Fujitsu’s sincerity with their sales projection. The company is currently only selling the device through its Japanese website, and has so far announced one major content deal in the Japanese market. Books from Japan’s largest online ebook supplier Papyless, which sells 90,000 Japanese ebook titles, can be wirelessly purchased and downloaded to the device, similar to Amazon’s Kindle.
Fujitsu sees its own future, and its a future in full color. Anybody excited about this?
By Dave Brooks
color, e-reader, flepia, fujitsu
I am definitely excited but what the A4 size over the A5 that are out now. I want to see a full pdf file without reformatting and buy school text books and newspapers for it.
I have seen this face to face now and I was quite disappointed. The colours were very faded out, refresh rate seemed slow - didn’t help that the software was all in Japanese so I found the menu hard to navigate though! Definitely not worth the money but I guess the only way is up!
[...] Fujitsu FLEPia I love my Kindle. Since I’ve gotten it, I have been able to tote a book just about everywhere I go. Now that it has a native PDF reader, I might even be able to use it for some sort of work application (don’t ask me what quite yet). The one thing the Kindle lacks is a color screen. In fact, almost all ePaper eBook readers don’t have color screens. There are a couple with a small color feature that does little more than provide a place to click on to get through to other parts of books, but no standard color screen. Fujitsu came out with one in Japan called the FLEPia and I want it for one reason: comic books. As I mentioned before, I have a huge comic book habit and a limited amount of time per day to sit down in my inner sanctum to read them. Much as I’ve done with the Kindle, if I had a way to easily transport my weekly comics electronically (many companies are offering digital downloads of comics nowadays), I’d be caught up. These things aren’t really available in the US yet, but that’s not stopped me from obtaining tech from those clever Japanese in the past. [...]