Interestingly enough... e ink screens CAN fold. They are just too slow for general tablet use.
On Mon, Apr 2, 2012 at 9:33 PM, John Gilmore <[email protected]> wrote: > [Summary: 2-screen laptops need fairly deep software support because 2 > screens don't look like 1 screen. I excerpted freely below; see > the link for the entire story. --gnu] > > http://www.afr.com/f/free/technology/digitallife/g_ZWzfPcJsePV9VdQfxY9w1H > > Sony's tablet a good idea gone wrong > PUBLISHED: 30 Mar 2012 > > The best thing that can be said about Sony's new $729 Tablet P is that > it means well. > > The central idea that must have led to the construction of the Tablet > P -- that iPads are too large -- is pretty sound. iPads are too large, > at least for a lot of users (the staff here at the Digital Life Labs > included), and at least for a lot of applications. > > So, yes, Sony was trying to solve a genuine problem when it came up > with the Tablet P, a tablet that folds in half so you can slip it into > your pocket or purse, that's light enough to read e-books on > for hours without your hand cramping, and small enough that you can > use it as a camera without looking like a total tool. > > The trouble was, they couldn't make it happen, not with > today's technology. To have a tablet fold in two, you either need one > screen that folds in two, or you need two screens with absolutely no > bezel, so that one screen blends seamlessly with the other screen when > they're placed side by side. Neither of those technologies are > available today, so all Sony's engineers could come up with was two > screens, each with a modest 4 mm bezel that, when placed next to the > other bezel, creates a whopping great 9 mm-wide black bar right in the > middle of the display. (The other millimetre is the gap between the > displays, which can be quite irritating if there's light behind the > display, shining through.) > > Now, that wouldn't be completely fatal if the Tablet P were running an > operating system that knew how to handle two screens with a black bar > and a sliver of light in the middle of them. But the Tablet P is > running Android, and neither Android nor most Android apps have a clue > how to use the dual display. > > Some apps on the Tablet P, chiefly the ones Sony has rewritten > specifically for the device, work quite well. The email app, for > instance, uses one screen as a virtual keyboard, and the other screen > as a display, when you're creating emails. When you're viewing emails, > one screen is used to list the items in the inbox, and the other > screen is used to preview the highlighted item. > > But trouble arises when you use apps other than the ones written to > cope with the black bar. Most apps will just curl up into a ball and > display only on one of the two screens. Neither of those screens is > very large, so you end up with apps displaying little bigger than they > would on a mobile phone. Worse yet, they're both very long and narrow, > far more so than many apps seem able to cope with, and as a result > many apps won't even fully utilise the one small screen they're > on. Amazon's Kindle app, for instance, an app so well written that it > can usually cope with any screen you throw at it, uses only 83 per > cent of one screen, and zero per cent of the other. Almost 60 per cent > of the Tablet P's display is left blank. > > It's such a pity, because a tablet that folds in two is such a good > idea. Perhaps the best thing that can be said about the Tablet P is > not that it means well, but that it's simply ahead of its time. > _______________________________________________ > Devel mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel > -- It's always darkest just before you are eaten by a grue.
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