Sony DPT-S1

Thirteen inch ereaders are few and far between and far outside my budget, so when the Onyx Boox Max went up for pre-order a couple weeks back, I immediately begged to borrow a review unit.

This 13″ ereader retails for $650 plus shipping and VAT, putting it far outside my budget.

I got the Max on Tuesday, and started thinking about the review on Saturday night. Five days is not nearly long enough to really plumb the depths of a device as complex as the Max, but I have a good excuse for writing the review this early.

The review unit died Friday night. We think it’s just a loose cable, but since I can’t use the Max right now I decided to take a few minutes and share my thoughts.

This is going to be a difficult review to write. The Max is not an ereader, not in the way you think of an ereader or use one, and I don’t think it fits into any predefined category.

I haven’t had such a category-breaking device since the Entourage Edge, that dual-screen textbook reader from early 2010.

The Edge was a well-conceived device with solid hardware and software, but it flunked out with a lot of reviewers because they couldn’t grasp its purpose or function. They approached it as an ereader, and tried to compare it to a Kindle, when in fact the Edge was a niche product designed to serve just one market.

If you are looking to buy a Max, I suggest that you avoid the mistakes those reviewers made, and set aside any preconceptions that the Max was made for reading ebooks. Based on my time with it, I would say that it is more of a document viewer than an ereader. Its sheer size precluded me from using it as an ereader.

This is more of a device that you would hold up and use for showing off blueprints, or one which you would use to proof a document a page at a time. You might also lay it on a table, and have several people looking at the screen at one time.

Now that I have used the Max, I can understand why Pocketbook has branded their large ereader as a blueprint reader for the construction market, and why the Sony DPT-S1 only supports PDF and is targeted at the business market. I think both Sony and Pocketbook built a prototype, started using it, and realized that they would have more success if they focused on a limited number of use cases. That’s why they refined their software to better support those use cases (the Pocketbook CAD Reader has yet to be released, but still).

A device built around a 13″ E-ink screen is not a product for the broader ereader market, so it made sense for Sony and Pocketbook to focus on niche markets with specific uses.

And luckily for Max owners, they can define their own niche uses (including ones I have’t thought of).

The Onyx Boox Max is an open Android device. It runs Android 4.0 on a 1GHz CPU. You can install third-party apps, and it also comes with Google Play.

I didn’t get a chance to test app compatibility with the review unit, but I do want to point out that potential owners should think about the apps they might install, and the abilities and features those apps would add to the Max.

Max owners can define their own niche uses for the Max, and so while I might declare what the Max is not, I can’t tell you exactly what it is.

We really don’t know yet.

With a price of nearly a thousand dollars and limited format support (PDF only), Sony’s 13.3″ E-ink writing is a tough sell for most users. While there are some business use cases, the average consumer has to work hard to justify the expense.

But after today’s news, that should get easier. News is breaking on MobileRead this morning that a seller on the Taobao marketplace in China is claiming that he can hack a DPT-S1 and expose the underlying Android OS.

Send that seller your device, and pay him 800 yuan, and he promises to send back a DPT-S1 that runs Android 2.2. which looks like:

So is this real, or a hoax?

I’m still looking for someone who has used this service to hack their DPT-S1, but at this point I have little reason to doubt the story.

Sony’s last three ereaders in the PRS line ran Android 2.2 (and could be hacked to access the OS), and Sony must have reused some of the code developed for those 6″ ereaders when they developed the software for the DPT-S1. (This could also explain why the DPT-S1 has the three iconic Android buttons below the screen.)

And so with time, a lot of money, and a little trust, you can turn Sony’s writing slate into an Android tablet.

That single act could double the DPT-S1’s usefulness – if not for the fact it runs such an old version of Android. If this were Android 3.0 Honeycomb, or Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, this project could be worth the time ans expense.

But Android 2.2 is over five years old, and that means you will have trouble installing Android apps.

Noteslate is a company with a reputation for talking big and not following through. Their first product turned out to be vaporware, and so far their second product, the 6.8″ Noteslate Shiro, has proven to be an illusive creature which has already missed its ship date.

So when Noteslate posted a teaser video today for the 13″ Hero, I was suitably pessimistic.

Expected to ship next year, the Noteslate Hero is a digital writing slate with a 13.3″ E-ink screen and a stylus. Noteslate hasn’t revealed any additional specs, but they did post this video:

So what do you think?

It’s hard to say how the Hero compares to the Sony DPT-S1 in terms of features (besides the obvious that one is available and the other is not). Sony’s writing slate has two touchscreens (capacitive and electromagnetic stylus) while Noteslate has only shown off their devices working with a stylus.

Noteslate has also teased a 9.7″ model which will also be released next year, and they’re accepting names for beta-testers for a Noteslate sketch app for iOS and Android.

I think this is a neat idea, but given the cost of the 13″ screen I just don’t see the Hero shipping.

The 6.8″ Noteslate Shiro, on the other hand, might ship early next year. The Shiro will run the same software as the Hero, only with a screen the same size as on the Kobo Aura H2O or the Onyx Boox T68. The Shiro will also have a stylus, 3 weeks of battery life, and cost $199.

It’s up for pre-order now on the Noteslate website.

Do you plan to get one?

Destined to be the perennial show floor demo but never the shipped product, Netronix’s 13.3″ Android-powered writing slate made another public appearance this week in Taipei.

Charbax caught up with Netronix at Computex a few days ago and shot a video of the latest pre-production model. Like the one I saw at CES 2015, this device is based on a 13.3″ Mobius screen (1600 x 1200 resolution). It has a dual touchscreen (capacitive and electromagnetic stylus) and runs Android 4.0.

It’s a nifty device and it would make a great competitor to the DPt-S1 from Sony, but as I pointed out before this device is no where close to landing on a store shelf. Netronix needs a customer before they can start production, and with a cost of over $600 per unit and a MoQ of 1,000, we’re looking at close to a million dollar investment.

Only a company like Sony, which cares as much about flagship products as profitable ones, can afford that kind of a boondoggle.

Netronix 13.3″ eReader Specs

• Screen: 13.3″ Mobius E-ink
• Resolution: 1200 x 1600
• Touchscreen: Capacitive, electromagnetic stylus
• OS: Android 4.0.4 Ice Cream Sandwich
• Formats supported: JPG, PNG, PDF, ePub, MOBI, FB2, HTML, TXT, RTF, Doc.
• Print documents from your PC to Notepad
• MicroSD card slot
• Battery: 1.5 Ah Li-polymer
• Connectivity: Wifi
• Dimensions: 310 mm x 233 mm x 6.6 mm
• Weight: approximately 400 grams

The Raspberry Pi is a cheap single-board computer designed for hacking and DIY projects. It’s been used as a weather station, a laptop, and most importantly a computer with a Kindle screen.

In that last project a hacker found a way to connect a Kindle to a Raspberry Pi over USB and turn the Kindle into a USB monitor, but now we can do one better. Hackaday has found the Pi-nk, a new project which turns a Kindle into wireless monitor.

This is by no means the first project with a wireless monitor; you can in fact turn just about any Android tablet or the iPad into a wireless monitor, but this idea is still unusual for E-ink devices.

And if you have a Raspberry Pi 2, this is an idea which you can replicate. The developer has put together a detailed how-to which explains how Pi-nk uses wireless instead of USB for almost all of the connections (including the keyboard). He worked from a Kindle Paperwhite, but since all Kindles now ship with Wifi this project should work with just about any Kindle model (just so long as it has been hacked).

Based on what I am reading, I don’t know that this will work with other E-ink devices, and that’s a shame.

I would really like to see this hack applied to the Sony Digital Paper DPT-S1, a writing tablet with a 13.3″ E-ink screen and an $800 price tag. That much larger screen would be a whole heck of a lot more useful than the 6″ screen on the Kindle, but the DPT-S1 doesn’t even have a web browser, much less have an active hacking community.

Pi-nk

Sony’s 13.3″ PDF reader is out of the reach of most of us, but if you’re richer than Croesus and in the market and in the market for a limited function device then I have some good news for you.

Sony is now selling the Digital paper DPTS-1 online, direct. My competitor noticed the change earlier today, beating me to the story. You can find the Digital Paper on the Sony Style website, and if you are looking for one of their three resale partners then you should visit Sony’s business/commercial sales website.

The Sony Digital Paper is a minimal function device which features an eye-catching one of a kind 13.3″ E-ink screen with two types of touchscreen tech (capacitive and Wacom). It ships with 4GB internal storage, a microSD card slot, Wifi, but not much else.

Thanks to its plastic construction, the Mobius screen on the DPTS-1 is both thinner and more durable than the E-ink screens found on most ebook readers. The Mobius screen is also why the DPTS-1 weighs in at a mere 12.6 ounces, which is impressive considering that it has a larger screen than most tablets.

Alas, while the hardware is nifty, the software is not. This device is strictly a PDF-only reader, meaning that it does not even support Epub or office doc formats.

I think that rather limits its usefulness, which is why I always suggest that a tablet, even a Surface Pro tablet, would be a better buy than the Sony Digital paper DPTS-1.

Sony

When Sony released their 13.3″ epaper writing slate in Japan in November, there was no indication that this 98,000 yen white elephant would ever see a wider release. Sony is well-known for releasing a product in single market, so I was surprised today when I learned that Sony had found a reseller partner who plans to release the Digital Paper DPT-S1 in the US later this year.

Worldox, a legal and financial document management company based in New Jersey, announced yesterday that they will be distributing the Sony Digital Paper DPT-S1 in North America in May. Worldox isn’t a retail distributor, so this device is unlikely to show up in stores, but business and institutional customers will be able to buy it direct from Worldox.

Assuming, that is, that they would want to waste $1,100 on a device which only supports PDFs and cannot be used for any related office tasks.

The DPT-S1 has simply amazing hardware, including a flexible screen which is to die for, but it’s severely hindered by the limited software running on it.

In addition to Wifi, a touchscreen, stylus, 2.8GB Flash storage, and a microSD card slot, the DPT-S1 has a 13.3″ Mobius screen, with a screen resolution of 1,600 x 1,200. E-ink announced this flexible plastic-backed screen tech last year, and while it has shown up on a couple smartwatches and smartphone cases, the DPT-S1 is the first product to use the screen (the Earl back country tablet should ship with a 6″ version later this year).

Thanks to the new screen tech, the DPT-S1 is both lighter and more durable than most of its brethren. It weighs in at 358 grams, less than many tablets. This writing slate also has 2 touchscreens, one (optical) designed to work with touch and the other (active digitizer) intended to work with the stylus.

That is an amazing screen and touchscreen, but I can’t make similar statements about the software. According to the English-language product page, the DPT-S1 is just as limited as it was when it shipped in November. It only supports viewing, editing, and managing PDFs, but no other formats.

Just to give you an idea of how limited it is, the DPT-S1 doesn’t even have an email client. And no, you can’t install apps and add abilities.

With that in mind, I predict that Worldox isn’t going to sell very many, and that’s probably a good thing. Buying $1,100 worth of tablets presents a much better return on your money.

But oh, how I want one.

Sony

Worldox

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