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Posts: 3,524 | Thanked: 2,958 times | Joined on Oct 2007 @ Delta Quadrant
#2607
Originally Posted by danramos View Post
I just had this conversation with my brother, where the SMART idea is for SOMEBODY to build an Android tablet so different but useful that it makes everyone go, "WHY DIDN'T WE THINK OF THAT?" I told him that I would LOVE for somebody (ideally Amazon, given their other products) to design an ANDROID tablet (a proper one) with a RESISTIVE touchscreen digitizer (so you can use either a stylus or finger) that uses a high resolution eInk display. It would be the most AWESOME thing for the Kindle app to run on.. and take ONSCREEN, hand-drawn notes and underlines, marks, etc. It would be able to do INCREDIBLY double-duty as a Google calendar with the ability to do hand-drawn marks, a GREAT way for artists to draw wacom-style on an eINK display with pressure-sensitivity and all (especially if the stylus can report whether the tip is being pressed or whether the blunt end is bring pressed (i.e. pen/pencil/spray vs immediate eraser). Since it's an Android tablet, it COULD run/do anything a tablet could do (although playing video would be awkwardy slow--but they HAVE managed to get around upwards of at least 15fps with eInk lately). The eInk guys have even recently begun making COLOR eInk screens (although the few devices made seem to make it look like it's a bit washed out--but it's still early).

Imagine the INCREDIBLE battery life on such a tablet!
I think this is a good idea, but I'm personally not a fan of resistive in the least.

What I *would* do, though, is go Pixel Qi for the display, and choose an active digitizer for input.

A Pixel Qi display gives the option to turn off the backlight, and thus save tons of the power of conventional LCDs with a very e-ink looking display. It's not quite e-ink, but the tablet should have epic battery life (eg. Notion Ink Adam is said to get insane battery life with the backlight off).

There's also some promising display technology from Mirasol, though it doesn't seem ready for market.

With an active digitizer, only the pen tip registers, so if your hand is on the screen, it doesn't screw things up. In this way it's extremely potent, quick, and accurate for writing and as a genuine art tool. The additional benefits of active digitizers are that they can register pressure very accurately as well as pen 'tilt' for different pens/brushes (eg. calligraphy).

There is some powerful software that works well with Digitizers

Take a look at Wacom's Cintiq (imagine on a smaller scale):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVHEFk-s_0E

I think pen input would be *huge* for students, business, and artists. The key here is the software. You would need very competent tools that allow for annotation, note-taking, and artistry -- and not in a gimmicky way, but extremely useful tools (low latency for immediate input response). The only one that I can think of for art, is a program called ArtRage. Here's a video.
 

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