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Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/01/29/hitachi_eink_w61h_phone/

Hitachi follows Moto with e-ink handset

Blotting paper not required

By James Sherwood

Posted in Phones, 29th January 2008 11:27 GMT

Agentless Backup is Not a Myth

E-ink seems to have left its mark on Hitachi, because the manufacturer has used the technology in its latest handset - the W61H.

Hitachi_eink_front

Hitachi's W61H: fitted with a 2.7in e-ink display

The clamshell phone’s lid-mounted e-ink display, or “Silhouette Screen” as it’s dubbed by Hitachi, measures 2.7in.The W61H also has a more traditional main display: a 2.8in LCD.

E-ink displays consist of positively charged white particles and negatively charged black particles, suspended in a specialist liquid and then printed onto a ‘plastic’ film. An electronic circuit is built into the film and display drivers in the gadget use this to control the formation of the pixels seen by users. One major benefit is that e-ink displays use much less power than, say, LCD displays do.

Hitachi_eink

Its 2.8in front LCD display shows video content from HD sources

The handset incorporates a digital TV tuner aligned to Japan's 1Seg system. It's capable of picking up HD broadcasts, downscaling them to fit its main display.

Measuring 107 x 51 x 17mm, the phone also features a 1.9-megapixel camera, which can store images on Micro SD cards of up to 2GB. A voice memo function enables it to act as a dictaphone, though by only recording up to four 20s sound clips it won’t be a competitor to Sony’s ICDUX70 and ICDUX80 MP3 dictation devices [1].

Users get a maximum talk time of about 340 minutes, from a 140-minute charge.

The W61H isn't the first e-ink handset to hit the market. Motorola’s Motophone F3 - reviewed here [2] - already uses an e-ink display. As does Sony’s eBook reader [3] gizmo, Amazon.com's Kindle [4] and the upcoming Readius [5], due this summer.

European users will have to sit tight for the time been because, so far, the handset’s only being, unveiled for the Japanese market.