Hands-On: Spring Design's Dual-Screen Android Alex eBook Reader

Posted 11/03/2009 at 11:30am | by Gordon Mah Ung

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There’s good news and bad news for eBook fans. First up: new eBook readers using Marvell’s ARMADA 166E chip could see triple the frame rate of first generation devices. The bad news: the faster frame rate of 3 fps won’t exactly have you playing Doom just yet but low frame rate animation will possible.

An eInk screen playing a 3 fps animation, using Marvell's new Armada chip

Marvell doesn’t mind though. The company’s new chip isn’t meant to just increase performance, it’ll also offer a cost reduction and power reduction by shrinking what is now a multi-chip board controller board down to a single chip. Marvell showed off several OEM designs including Spring Design’s upcoming dual-screen Alex.

Based on Android, Alex features a color lower touch screen with a 6-inch electronic paper display. Using its built-in 3G modem or Wi-Fi, the Alex will let you visit a web site, select a story, and the device will reflow it to the EPD screen. The color screen can then be switched off to save power. This makes browsing blogs and news sites much more feasible, since you don't have to wait for the ebook to render individual pages before you get to your target content.