Norwegian startup reMarkable has unveiled a tablet aimed at those who can still concentrate better with a pencil in hand, but don't want to turn their backs on digital
ReMarkable is a tablet for reading, writing and drawing. An elegant, and in its own way original, tool designed for all intents and purposes for the digital age, but intended for those who want to retain the simplicity and power of working on a surface that looks incredibly like the "old" paper.
The project, explains the reMarkable team on its blog, was made possible thanks to a three-year collaboration with E-Ink, a world leader in the electronic ink industry. They eventually succeeded in designing and developing an innovative digital tablet that offers the experience of reading, writing and drawing as if it were real paper. Paper, according to reMarkable, is something different... it helps you think and concentrate better without distractions, but it obviously has its limitations. Which, in this case, are overcome by the technology typical of the most modern tablets.
Old sensations come back to life
ReMarkable is a tablet with a 10.3-inch monochrome e-Ink touch display with a resolution of 1,872 x 1,404 pixels - and 226 PPI (dots per inch) - made of plastic capable of supporting a pressure of up to 2.048 levels, in short, similar to that of a regular pen.
(taken from YouTube)
The Norwegian "paper" tablet houses a 1GHz ARM Cortex-A9 processor, 512MB of DDR3L RAM and 8GB of non-expandable storage (the equivalent of 100,000 pages), but a cloud storage service is available. There's no shortage of 802.11n Wi-Fi, an excellent 3,000 mAh battery rechargeable via a micro USB port. The tablet has a custom Linux-based operating system - called Codex - that at the moment only supports the most common formats, namely PDF and ePUB, but will soon add others. It allows, among other things, to synchronize content with any type of device.
Coming next summer
The reMarkable tablet - which measures 177 x 256 x 6.7 mm and weighs 350 grams - is currently up for pre-order on the manufacturer's website at an introductory price of $379 (rising to $529 later) with first deliveries expected in August next year.