Fujitsu launches world's first colour eBook reader

 

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By Barry Collins

Posted on 18 Mar 2009 at 09:38

Fujitsu has launched what could be a momentous breakthrough for the nascent eBook industry - the world's first colour e-paper.

The company first announced it was developing a colour eBook back in April 2007, but the device has now gone on sale in Japan. The FLEPia is capable of displaying 260,000 colours on its 8in, 768 x 1,024 screen.

The advent of colour could tempt more publishers - especially newspapers and magazines - to produce eBook versions of their titles. Many have so far been reluctant because the limited, greyscale screens don't do justice to expensive colour photography and layouts.

Like the displays we've seen on devices such as Amazon's Kindle and the Sony Reader, the FLEPia only consumes power when redrawing the screen, giving the device a claimed battery life of 40 hours.

However, the colour does make the screen notably slower to redraw. Fujitsu claims it will take 1.8 seconds to refresh the screen with a single scan, going up to eight seconds for three scans.

The colour screen doesn't make the device any bulkier than a conventional reader, either, measuring 158 x 240 x 12.5mm and weighing 385g.

It is, however, vastly more expensive, currently selling for 99,750 yen - or £726 - in Japan. There's no word yet on a European launch.