Got questions for the makers of the Readius?

[moz]

Right now though, I'd much rather have a touch screen at the existing 150-ish ppi. Sure, 300ppi would be nice but being able to write on the device is much, much more important.

I've just spent about $US400 getting a Sony 505, but I'd buy a Writeus with a similar-size screen in a second even if it was $US600 delivered to Australia. Sure, making phone calls is a nice addition but without bluetooth support that's a bit of a gimmick for me (my phone is 45x105x15mm and that's about as big as I want in a phone that I have to hold up to my head all the time).

Originally Posted by jharker

Just to put that in some context, I want to point out that 600 DPI in a 6" diagonal screen would mean a screen with resolution 2160x2880... which is pretty high-end even for a desktop, let alone a mobile device!

Yes, but rasterising it one line at a time is not too challenging even for a mobile device. Assuming a half second refresh and 4 bit display (16 grey levels) you're talking 24Mb/s output, well within the range of even a 1W processor. Sure, displaying a new highly compressed jpeg every refresh might challenge it because of the amount of processing involved, but for rendering text I think you'd be fine.

My "wallet" (a plastic box) currently has my phone in it, but also a 140x120x20mm paper notebook, a couple of pens, 10 credit-size cards and a bunch of change. If I could merge the phone and notebook with something about the notebook size that opened out to a page about 200x100mm that I could write on that would be brilliant. As was pointed out in another thread, live text recognition is not essential, an on-screen keyboard mode is fine for that, what I want from the notepad is a way to draw pictures (of my truly awful handwriting mostly). If I had the device I would want a cover for it that was fairly robust and water-resistant, and had space for a few credit cards and cash so that I could replace the whole "wallet", and just throw it in my pannier when I ride my bike to and from work. But I could make that cover/box myself if I needed to.

Oooh, samples of my notebook contents here: http://moz.geek.nz/mozbike/build/lon...ess-ute-01.jpg http://moz.geek.nz/mozbike/build/lon...ess-ute-03.jpg
(scan of pages about 200mm wide from memory). I don't expect to be able to OCR that handwriting for a very long time, and I'd be happy to do it on my computer rather than my phone.