After almost a year of agonizing posturing by Sony, the semi-flexible 13.3-inch Digital Paper has finally been unveiled. The Digital Paper supports stylus input, has built-in WiFi, and lasts up to three weeks on a single charge. The key technology here is the new Mobius display from E Ink, which is very light and highly flexible — though it isn’t clear how much of that flexibility made it into the final Digital Paper product.
When it comes to displays, the problem — as far as weight and flexibility are concerned — has always been the substrate. The liquid crystals, the organic diodes, the capsules of ink, the transistors, the wiring — all of the key display stuff is already light and flexible. But you have to build all of that stuff on something heat-resistant and transparent — i.e. glass. Glass is heavy (especially at larger sizes), and it’s very brittle (especially when it’s thin, which is necessitated by weight constraints). Glass is a terrible display substrate, basically, but sadly there hasn’t been another option. Until now.
At $1100 (shipping in May), Digital Paper is being pitched at education, business, and legal environments. Digital Paper appears to only support PDFs, but the website implies that software is included to convert Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files to PDF format. Stylus input appears to be accurate and high-resolution, though e-ink’s refresh latency might cause you some mental discomfort. 4GB of internal storage and a micro SD slot should give you plenty of space for annotating textbooks and documents. At just 357 grams (12.6 ounces), Digital Paper is by far the lightest large-screen tablet on the market, too (the iPad Air is a chunky 469 grams). Hopefully this is the beginning of an exciting, flexible-and-light-weight computing revolution!
