Pretty much all of our gadgets these days come with colour screens. The time of the mono display has well and truly passed. Would you buy a phone or a PMP with just a monochrome screen? But there is one corner of the market that does just provide this black and white display, and for good reason. E-book readers have this look because it is easy on the eye with the full sunlight visible e-ink technology. Now Fujitsu are heralding a new era for these e-Books with the FLEPia.
This 8 inch touchscreen colour e-reader is the first of its kind and shows the future for digital publishing. It has a resolution of 1024 x 768 and 260,000 colours. An SD card reader allows you to keep your books with you at all times. The 801.11 b/g Wi-Fi allows for surfing of the web and checking your e-mails while the ability to view JPEG files gives you the chance to turn it into a digital picture frame. It also has Bluetooth 2.0 and the whole lot is controlled by the Windows CE 5.0 operating system.
It has been reported that when running only 64 colours the time taken to change pages is 1.8 seconds which increases to 8 seconds when the colours are set to 260,000. Being the first of its kind, the price tag isn’t small running at about the $1000 mark.