Touchscreen - Page 1

Sagem Wireless was showing a new e-reader prototype at Mobile World Congress a few days ago. It has a 6" capacitive touch displays (we're not sure what kind of display) that supports fingers and stylus input. It also has 3G and Wi-Fi. Here's a video of the prototype:

The enTourage eDGe is an exciting device - an e-reader/netbook with a dual LCD and e-paper display running on Google's Android OS. I had the good chance to interview Asghar Mostafa, President and CEO of enTourage Systems, and Doug Atkinson, their VP of Marketing and BizDev.

eTourage Systems, based in McLean, VA, was founded in early 2008 to work on the eDGe. They say that the eDge is "an interactive dualbook that merges the functionalities of an e-reader, tablet netbook, notepad, audio and video recorder and player in one dual-screen device".

Q: First of all, the eDGe release date was set to February, now I see in your site that it's pushed back to March. Is that still on track?

DA: Pre-orders received by January 12 will start shipping at the end of this week as scheduled. New orders will begin shipping in March.

Here's a short video showing Samsung's new E60, E61 and E101 e-readers:

via Engadget (who were able to get a short hands on on these e-readers back in CES and say that the touch input is extraordinarily responsive

Samsung's SNE-60K is now available in Korea in the Kyobo Bookstores. It costs 429,000 Won ($375). Interestingly, Samsung says that their older 5" SNE-50K reader was a failure - they only sold 3000 units. The major complaint was the absence of wireless connection. The new reader has Wi-Fi support, and also a larger 6" touch E Ink display, bluetooth, MP3 support and hand-writing recognition. Kyobo aims to sell around 15,000 e-readers by the end of 2010.

Samsung SNE-60K

There are still problems in Korea's e-book market. There are only 65,000 Korean titles available, and most popular bestsellers are not sold in a digital format. The major competitor for the 60K is iRiver's Story which support more formats and costs less (359,000 Won).

Via KoreaHerald

Bookeen say that the upcoming Orizon e-reader will be available in May (in both the US and the UK). They also update us that the reader will have a multi-touch Sipix display (6", 800x600).

Bookeen Orizon

Beside the Sipix e-paper display, the Orizon has 1GB of internal memory, micro-SD slot, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, accelerometer and mini-USB. It weights only 150 grams, and supports several file formats, inlcluding ePub and PDFs.

Update: We just got word from Bookeen that the Orizon will be available in May 2010, and not April

PVI's chairman says that they plan to release color and flexible E Ink displays. They are also working on touch-enabled E Inks, and ones that support video. They predict that the market share of touch-capable e-readers will increase sharply in 2010. PVI wants to place the touch sensors behind the display, so image quality will be better.

PVI also reveals that E Ink's response time has increased, to the point where animation can be played.

Via E-Ink-Info

Amazon has bought a startup named Touchco, who is working on new touchscreen technology. Their touch-overlay screen is completely transparent and can detect an unlimited number of simultaneous touch points.  It is also cheap - less than $10 per square foot. So, will the next-gen Kindle will have a touch display?

Via Engadget