Sony Digital Paper System DPT-S1 Review
by Ganesh T S on December 17, 2015 8:50 AM ESTHardware Platform
In the previous section, we had a brief description of the external hardware aspects of the Sony DPT-S1. A few aspects not noted over there include the presence of a microSD slot on the back as well as a micro-USB charging / data transfer port just beneath the navigation / context menu buttons at the bottom. The microSD slot can accommodate microSDHC cards up to 32GB in size. The back panel also includes a reset hole that can be activated with a pin while booting up to restore the device to factory conditions.
Thanks to a forum member over at mobileread, we have some insight into the internals of the system. The pictures linked in the forum are reproduced in the gallery below.
The board shots reveal the following components:
- Freescale i.MX508 application processor (single core Cortex-A8 at up to 1GHz)
- Samsung LPDDR2 K4P8G304EQ x32 8Gb (1GB) DRAM
- SanDisk 4GB eMMC 4.51 19nm flash (SDIN7DP2-4G)
- Wacom digitizer
- Neonode zForce NN1001 optical touch controller
In addition, the FCC ID printed in the back (VPYLBWN572) indicates the presence of a Murata WLAN module which internally uses a Atheros AR6003G 1x1 802.11b/g/n 2.4GHz radio-on-chip WLAN controller.
The stylus / pen supplied as part of the DPT-S1 is passive. It doesn't need any batteries. No recharging is necessary. The Wacom digitizer is also passive in nature. According to a forum post on mobileread, it is possible to use non-Sony digitizer pens with the DPT-S1. This indicates that Wacom's EMR (Electro-Magnetic Resonance) technology is in use. The power requirements for EMR are satisfied by the display side. The digitizer generates a magnetic field that allows energy inducement in the pen's resonator. This can, in turn, be detected by the digitzer to determine the coordinates of the pen's position and its orientation.
The DPT-S1 has a touchscreen with multi-touch support. The teardown reveals an optical touch controller. The DPT-S1 integrates a set of light emitters and detectors along the edges of the screen and an optical light guide to the neonode touch controller IC. The IC controls the light sent out and also monitors the detectors. Changes in lighting conditions can indicate the presence of a touch object. The coordinates can also be calculated by the IC once calibration is in-place.
The device contains a rechargeable Li-ion battery rated at 3.7 V DC, 1270mAh. With the supplied 5V @ 1.5A USB charger, Sony indicates that full charging can take up to 2.5 hours.
Coming back to the general characteristics of the hardware, we find that the rear side of the device is a fingerprint magnet despite not being glossy. The front screen itself, thankfully, is not that bad. The navigation and context menu buttons make an audible click when pressed. While this is good feedback, there appears to be a lack of consistency across the three buttons in terms of the force required for activation. The placement of the power button in a slanted panel works perfect, but some users might prefer the power button elsewhere. The placement of the micro-USB port is unfortunate in the sense that the device has to be taken out of the sleeve for charging purposes. All these are minor aspects in the overall scheme of things.
The physical characteristics of the E-Ink Mobius screen (8" x 10.625" with a 13.3" diagonal, 1600 x 1200 resolution and 16 levels of grayscale support) have already been discussed. Readers might be wondering if a 13.3" tablet would be a good alternative if the backlighting / eye strain issue is not a big problem.
The above photograph shows the same graphics-heavy PDF page displayed on a Sony DPT-S1 and a Dell Inspiron 13 7000 series in tablet mode (13.3" 1920x1080 touchscreen). Despite the absence of color capabilities, it is obvious that the aspect ratio of the DPT-S1 leads to a better experience with the perusal of the content.
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melgross - Thursday, December 17, 2015 - link
I've used Kindles for a while, and never liked them. The screens bother me. The brightness changes outdoors depending on whether a cloud passes by. Generally, they're ok, but not great. The disadvantages far outweigh the advantages, which are just two, length of battery life, and..., well, that's just one.name99 - Thursday, December 17, 2015 - link
As someone who alternates a lot between substantial amounts of paper and iPad reading (though not eInk) I'd say that, at least for me and everyone in my family, melgross is correct. I have no experience of eye strain or any other issues when reading my iPad as opposed to paper. Maybe this is because I set the iPad brightness at something that makes sense rather than reading at nuclear flare level in a dark room?phexac - Friday, December 18, 2015 - link
And this is especially the case since we've transitioned to LCD tech that doesn't generate image by redrawing it multiple times per second. To me THAT was what caused strain. LCDs don't actually refresh the image unless it changes, which makes reading static things such as text on them a lot easier.And iPads have some of the best LCDs out there (I am comparing shitty TN panel laptops etc. here, that could conceivably be hard on the eyes cuz they are so shitty).
nikon133 - Thursday, December 17, 2015 - link
Just wondering... it would make more sense comparing this with Surface Pro 3 or 4... or iPad Pro... than 16:9 Dell, for reading comics.ganeshts - Thursday, December 17, 2015 - link
I was looking for a 13.3" screen - closest to what the DPT-S1 has.I would definitely provide additional comparative photographs if I had access to a SP3/4 or iPad Pro :)
digiguy - Thursday, December 17, 2015 - link
I think the ipad pro or the surface book are a much better size to be compared with. Surface pro 3/4 is smaller. I bought an ipad pro because I wanted true A4 size, which my Surface pro 3 could not do (ipad pro screen is basically as big as surface pro 3/4 including bezels). Surface book displays PDFs of the same size as ipad pro because of the different aspect ratio (try putting them next to each other and display a PDF full screen)imaheadcase - Thursday, December 17, 2015 - link
You know what i am surprised does not exist, a paper notebook, but with Ereader paper inside. I can't tell you how many times I would love to write in a notebook, and it sends it to my computer instantly(or at least when WiFi is near) as text notes to remember later. It would be great for businesses as well, jot down notes, it sends it to certain people or groups of people.But that is the hardest part of tech like this, figuring out what is PRACTICAL in a work environment. I think the biggest challenge in the next coming years is not tech advances, its UI design and feasible hardware design for the end user.
I work at Walmart, i can tell you they spend MILLIONS every year on tech that is thrown on the next year because it simply does not do what they are sold on. For example, they spent $800 on motorolla handhelds for inventory...for 4000+ stores, around 25 each store. Not a single person in stores like them. They have terrible UI, slow, can't connect to WiFi in stores fast, etc.
melgross - Thursday, December 17, 2015 - link
I had a chance to try this for about an hour, earlier this year, and I wasn't overly impressed. While it's fine for general purposes, the screen is coarse when trying to read smaller type. It's somewhat unpleasant because that coarseness eliminates differences between typefaces in anything under 8 points, a size that is common, and even somewhat in 10 point. That makes readability less than comfortable at smaller type sizes, even though it's legible.Another problem is that anywhere the light isn't bright, the screen suffers, rapidly becoming difficult to read at dimmer levels. I found myself snuggling closer to the light, which was an annoying experience. For this price, something should have been done to add side lighting.
It's slow, and anyone used to a decent tablet will be frustrated by that. It becomes old, fast.
Graphics are also coarse when grey shades are present.
I didn't get a chance to try the stylus, so I can't comment on that. But for the money, there are much better choices. As far as eye strain goes, it's been shown that we can't tell the difference between reflected light and transmitted light. A lot of people who get eye strain get it because they have the screen adjusted incorrectly, not because of the screen type.
ganeshts - Thursday, December 17, 2015 - link
Can you link me to a PDF that has this problem? I would genuinely like to try out.The 'smallest text size' PDF I tried to read was this: http://images.anandtech.com/doci/9860/849-850.jpg , and when I had trouble, I could just zoom in and read it properly (as shown in the pic to the right).
I would venture to suggest that if a PDF is having readability problems with this device, things are going to be a lot worse with anything else in this form factor.
name99 - Thursday, December 17, 2015 - link
My quick calculation is that the DPI is 150, and with only limited grey scale to handle anti-aliasing, rather than the subpixel many-level anti-aliasing available on a color screen. So you're looking at something like iPad resolution not iPad retina resolution.The difference for technical documents between iPad and iPad retina resolution was/is immediately obvious. Take any random modern technical PDF, something like this
https://www.spec.org/workshops/2008/sanfrancisco/p...
I don't have access to an old iPad, but I can immediately see the difference between how this looks on my (non-retina) iMac and on an retina iPad, and I suspect that on current eInk it looks like the non-retina version. (Certainly that's what you photo seems to show, though admittedly a photo is a non-ideal way to resolve the issue.)