The StarTrek ‘Pad’ Arrives?

Samsung is coming out with an eBook reader to compete with Kindle. It has some pluses and minuses –

Samsung is getting into the e-book reader bandwagon with its Papyrus. There isn’t that much technical details available for the Papyrus but there are some:

* An A5-sized reader, which means that it is 8.25 x 5.75″. Thickness will probably be less than 1″. Just a guess.
* EPD (electronic paper display) has touch capability (you’ll need to use the stylus that’s included)
* 512MB of internal memory with no memory card option
* No WiFi and no cellular connection either

No WiFi? OK, then you’d expect it to have some WWAN connection. But nope. Not on the Papyrus. And that will doom the Papyrus unfortunately.

I would think that companies would have learned a good lesson from Amazon’s Kindle by now. You most important part about a successful e-book reader is that it needs to be supremely easy to load content onto it. Samsung’s Papyrus, for now, seems to have already failed. The target price will be under US$300 according to sources. The Papyrus is available in Europe and will be launched in Korea in June. US? Maybe.

The plus? Much better form factor. The minus? Lack of serious connectivity options. When the Reader grows up it will most likely sport a SD type slot for both data cards and wireless and a RJ45 connector.

But at a minimum with release of the Samsung reader, another StarTrek physical goes from being science fiction to science fact.

Linky.