E-Ink Paper Notepad From Sony Ready For Release This Year

In a technology climate where seemingly everyone is trying to produce a flexible smartphone or watch, Sony has spent a lot of time on what they believe could become a huge success on the notepad end of the tech industry. Their new product, the e-ink paper notepad, is a pretty interesting piece of technology that could make paper obsolete once and for all. The e-ink paper notepad has been under development for a long time, and it’s finally ready to be released.

Sony says the e-ink paper notepad could be a useful tool for students since they won’t have to lug around real paper sheets in order to scribble down important information anymore. But this notebook is good for so much more than just that. The product itself takes a huge leap for paper-thin computing and delivers something that can be further developed and refined to make up the foundation of tomorrow’s flexible notepads.

The e-ink paper display is not a product developed by just Sony themselves. It’s a collaboration with E-Ink. The e-ink paper notepad weighs just 358 grams and is flexible enough to be called paper. It has a resolution of 1200 x 1600 pixels, and since it doesn’t use glass, it weighs 50% less than if the display would have used touchscreen glass.

One benefit of e-ink paper is that it has a more tolerant touch sensitivity than touchscreen glass for example. With e-ink paper, you can rest your hand while writing on the surface without triggering or adding clutter to the interactive display technology. Sony is planning on releasing this e-ink paper notepad later this year. Even though the demo product is just a prototype, the notepad will come in the same format and weight as the demo. They are targeting a batch of universities to start with, but my guess is that in order to try their innovation in a real environment, they are creating a commercial e-ink paper notepad as well. Could this be the year of the flexible display? We certainly think so here at Bit Rebels.