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Fujitsu Launches "Colour Kindle" for Japanese Market
Japan's Fujitsu Frontech has announced the commercial launch of its "colour Kindle" device, which it says is the world's first color e-paper mobile terminal. The Fujitsu FLEPia features an 8-inch display screen capable of showing up to 260,000 colors in high-definition, in addition to being equipped with Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connectivity.
FLEPia is also power-efficient, enabling up to 40 hours of continuous battery operation when fully charged, and does not require power for continuous display of a screen image, consuming power only during re-draw. Featuring significant storage capabilities, when used with a 4GB SD card, the color e-paper terminal can store the equivalent of 5,000 conventional paper-based books.
Fujitsu Frontech and Fujitsu Laboratories co-developed the proprietary color e-paper product, and announced the launch of FLEPia in April 2007 as the world's first color e-paper mobile terminal. Previously, commercial samples of FLEPia were available for purchase on a limited basis for corporate use only, as part of field trialsl. Compared to the FLEPia commercial samples which were used in field marketing, the latest FLEPia offers 1.5 times higher brightness and greater contrast, enabled through optimization of the color e-paper's optical properties. Re-draw speed was also enhanced by 1.7 times.
A touch screen featured on the 8-inch display screen, along with a digital pen, enables easy operation of FLEPia. Also included are a scroll key and 6 function buttons, enabling users to freely and quickly implement commands on the screen in all 4 directions (up, down, left, right), as desired.
Two popular e-book viewers widely used on PCs or mobile phones in Japan - "BunkoViewer" (XMDF format; "bunko" refers to "library" in Japanese) and "T-Time" (.book format) are included as standard features.
In addition to the content browser, Microsoft's Windows CE5.0 (Japanese version) enables use of an internet browser, e-mail, and various software on FLEPia - including Microsoft's Office platform.
Posted to the site on 18th March 2009