Fujitsu announced today the first commercially available color eBook reader–well that is if you live in Japan. Sales start there in the later half of April.
The .84 pound device, called FLEPia, has a 260,000 color display with 768×1024 resolution. Like other eReaders, the display in the FLEPia doesn’t consume power to retain an image. It only draws power when drawing the screen. This gives the FLEPia up to 40 hours of battery time according to Fujitsu. The XScale processor I imagine helps in this regard too.
Color is a nice move forward here in eReaders. There are some sacrificies for a color display, though. One is an almost two second repaint time when switching from page to page in a book. The device is almost three times as expensive as the Kindle, hitting the shelves at over $1000. For those wanting to try out the latest in eBooks, though, the FLEPia may be irresistable.
Oh, and according to the Fujitsu press release there is touch support, although from what I can gather it’s a resistive touch.
Also, we’re talking Windows CE here. So no fancy iPhone quality, Windows 7 touch gestures anytime soon. 🙂