Polymer Vision's dream of an all-in-one e-book reader and portable media device has reportedly faded.
The Readius in action: the flexible E-Ink screen folds out.
(Credit: Erica Ogg/CNET)The Netherlands-based maker of the Readius folded recently, according to a report in England's Hampshire Chronicle. The company was a spinoff of Philips and had offices in Southampton in the U.K. The local paper says 50 jobs at the Southampton location were lost when the company went bankrupt on July 7.
The Readius was a strange-looking, if ambitious device. Part portable media device, part e-reader, the Readius was innovative in that it used a flexible E-Ink display so it could be folded up to be made smaller. It initially caught the attention of gadget hounds at the Mobile World Congress in early 2008, and was supposed to launch in fall of 2008.
In that time, the e-reader landscape has since totally changed. While the Sony Reader has remained mostly stagnant, Amazon's Kindle has bested most initial cautious expectations for the original device. The larger model meant for textbooks, the Kindle DX, was also warmly received when introduced earlier this year. While these three models run between $300 and $500, the Readius and its flexible display was bound to be much more expensive to produce and would likely have been a tough sell to readers.
Updated at 2:45 p.m. PDT: Polymer Vision President Karl McGoldrick confirmed Monday that the company has gone into bankruptcy, but said he is not ditching the product. "We're working hard to find new investors to take over and re-start and get our technology and product into the market, where it should be," he said in an e-mail to CNET News.
Vodafone makes itself known at GSMA.
(Credit: Kent German/CNET Networks)The GSMA Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, is winding to a close, but that doesn't mean mobile phone news have stopped streaming in. The third day of GSMA 2008 saw AMD announcing big plans for mobile phone processors, RIM's co-CEO downplaying the recent BlackBerry outage, and the LiMo Foundation possibly giving Google's Android a run for its money with its own effort at an open, Linux-based operating system. Of course, we also took the opportunity to look at phones and carriers off the beaten path.
For starters, Senior Editor Kent German explored the large Vodafone plaza (Vodafone is a UK-based carrier) and took a look at their phones, such as the Nokia 5310 and the Samsung SGH-P110, which we'll never get here. He also lamented the lackluster Alcatel presence, despite their big showing in 2007. NEC is a big phone manufacturer outside of the U.S., and Kent gave us a good look at the NEC FOMA N705i for NTT DoCoMo in Japan, which also happens to be one of the first LiMo Foundation phones.
Nokia's Remade uses recycled and renewable materials to lessen its environmental impact.
(Credit: Nokia)In an effort to go green, Nokia has unveiled Remade, a phone that is made entirely out of renewable and recycled parts. Senior Editor Bonnie Cha also got a look at the much talked about Garmin Nuvifone, a touch screen phone with a lot of GPS functionality. Andrew Lim from CNET UK gave us a hands-on look at the luscious LG KF600 and KF700 touch screen phones as well.
One of the different devices we saw is the Polymer Vision's Readius, a phone that is also an e-book reader--the display can even be rolled up like paper. Another phone that looks very different from the rest is the Modu, which has different "sleeves" that can add to the functionality of the phone. Even though iRiver is more known for their MP3 players, this year in Barcelona, iRiver Europe announced it's breaking into the cell phone business with its first ever mobile phone, called the iRiver W7.
Readius e-book reader that's also a phone.
(Credit: Crave Asia)ZTE, which doesn't have much of a presence in the U.S. market, is one of the largest cell phone manufacturers in China, so we had to take a look at the company's phones. Overall, we're pretty impressed--their phones ranged from the keyboard-equipped smartphone to the simple flip phone. A lot of their devices are high-end megapixel phones that support HSDPA. As for companies that the U.S. is familiar with, Palm is unfortunately rather quiet at GSMA 2008, but news is that it might debut a white version of the Palm Centro on February 19th.
We'll have more as the week goes on, but please take a look at our complete coverage of GSMA Mobile World Congress 2008 for plenty of product slide shows, videos, and more.
(Credit:
Crave Asia)
Polymer Vision is a company spun off from Philips. Its claim to fame is the Readius, an e-book reader which is also a mobile phone. Though it has been around for more than a year, there's renewed interest in it because it will finally be shipping in 2008. We tracked down the company's booth at the GSMA Mobile World Congress to learn more about this device.
The primary purpose of the Readius is to act as an e-book reader. Even though the display resolution is pedestrian at 320x240 pixels, the fact that it can be rolled up allows it to be much larger than regular mobile phone displays. The 5-inch gray scale display uses power only when it is drawing an image, which means once your page is loaded, your battery won't be sapped as you are reading what's on the screen. We found the display to be very sharp and easy on the eyes, just like real paper with no uncomfortable glare that LCDs can sometimes give.
The main menu is divided into six rows on the screen, each one selectable using the touch-sensitive buttons found on the unit's body. The main categories are RSS feeds, e-books, messages and emails--all text-heavy items. The row of touch-sensitive buttons also acts as navigation control. Depending on whether you slide your finger upward or downward, you can move between pages. From what we observed, there is no smooth scrolling, so you can't read a page like you do on a computer text window where you can pull a navigation bar on the right. We also found that the pages take a while to refresh, which could explain why it's more efficient for whole pages to load at one time instead of allowing smooth scrolling.
As a mobile phone, the Readius may not be able to meet everyone's expectations. While it does have the latest connectivity features like HSDPA and Bluetooth, the form factor of this handset makes it a little hard to use. For example, you can't really have a decent voice conversation with the Readius without using a headset. You can synch your contacts into the device, but if you want to punch in numbers, you'll need to use a virtual keypad.
Another thing: What could potentially be a deal-breaker is that you can't conveniently reply to emails and text messages because there is no easy way to enter text. This could, we reckon, be solved by using a separate Bluetooth QWERTY thumbpad. But that's one more thing to carry, a proposition that won't go down well for many. A representative from Polymer Vision also told us the company is developing speech-to-text software for text input, but this was not available for a test run at MWC.
The Readius has a battery that is not user-replaceable. A microSD slot is onboard for memory expansion. As of now, Telecom Italia is the only operator that has a publicly announced deal to carry this handset later in the year. We understand that Polymer Vision is in talks with some companies in Asia. These are in countries with established 3G networks, although the representative could not be more specific as discussions are still ongoing.
As an e-book/newspaper/RSS reader, the Readius is an excellent proposition, thanks to its compact form factor and ability to sync with feed providers over the air using its cellular capabilities. As a mobile phone, we think it still needs a bit of work. The unit we saw was far from final, and Polymer Vision still has half a year to make changes before shipping. Hopefully, we will see a much improved version when it gets into the hands of consumers later this year.
(Source: Crave Asia)
(Credit:
Polymer Vision)
If we were editors for a thesaurus, "brag" would become a synonym for "concept." Companies tease consumers all the time with digital renderings of products that never see the light of day. This is why it came as quite a surprise that Polymer Vision, a spinoff from Dutch company Philips, has committed to selling its Readius mobile phone with a rollout display.
This mobile phone is not much bigger than your average candy-bar handset but still manages to include a 5-inch display that can be folded out to one side. The screen is a monochrome one (black and white), but its size makes it great for reading e-books and other text documents.
An earlier press release on the Polymer Vision site said the device should have shipped by the end of 2007, but news reports say it's now expected to launch this year. For now, check out some images of this not-just-a-concept-anymore handset.
(Source: Crave Asia)
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