Telstra has revealed the addition of almost one million new mobile services in the six months to December 2011, but Sensis revenues plummeted 24 percent in 12 months.
The 5-inch screen is large, but as it only supports 16 greyscales, reading text and information is the primary function. Future models promise colour screens and input capabilities, but the upcoming version 1 offers access to a range of online information in a fast, convenient and long-battery life way that no other phone offers.
Polymer Vision and no doubt E-Ink are working on creating a colour version of the technology, undoubtedly with a fast enough refresh rate to smoothly play video clips, along with some kind of touch control as is the clear trend today, but clearly that’s all still firmly in the labs and not yet ready for prime time, or it would have launched as a colour touch device.
If OLED manufacturers can, in the future, successfully make ultra-thin screens that could be safely rolled up, they could be an interesting competing technology.
No doubt there will be future versions of the Readius with a slide out QWERTY keyboard or a numeric keypad with T9 predictive text to allow input and to transform the Readius from more of a reader to more of a true smartphone.
The Readius is a glimpse of the future, where technology works in ways and breaks boundaries that were previously ‘impossible’.
In its first version, it looks like it delivers exactly what it promises – simple, instantly updateable access to news, email and other information, access to making and receiving calls, and as a replacement for a separate audio player, while incorporating a revolutionary roll-up screen.
Whether this is enough to tempt the iPhone-loving masses is yet to be seen, but especially as the technology further matures, the Readius is yet another memorable milestone in the quest to create the ultimate handheld communications and information device.
It’s a form of ‘mobile Internet device’, something we’ve heard a lot about from Intel, seen in the iPhone and devices such as the DataWind Pocket Surfer 2, as well as when using just about any smartphone.
If only the Readius was also a Writeius, letting you input information as easily as any mobile phone, especially after years of the Palm, Pocket PCs, UMPCs, the iPhone and even the Asus Eee PC.
Still, if a reading focused device, such as the Kindle, Sony’s e-Book reader, the Iliad e-Book reader and the Readius, among others, is going to blossom and succeed, it has to start somewhere, and having a slick roll-up screen trick doesn’t hurt when it comes to product differentiation!
Good luck, Readius. It’s a fascinating twist on the mobile phone as we know it, with great promise to radically change the way we think of large screen devices, especially as the technology matures and improves.
David Bass
| For the fourth year in a row, IDC has placed content security provider Websense (NASDAQ: WBSN) at the top of the IDC Worldwide Web Security 2011 –…
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