Toshiba Biblio e-reader handled, deemed extremely small
By Laura June 
posted May 25th 2009 11:58PM
posted May 25th 2009 11:58PM
We heard that Japanese carrier KDDI au had unveiled a Toshiba "e-reader," and now we're getting a first look at it. The e-inkless Biblio has a 3.5-inch, 960 x 480 LCD, with WiFi, 7GB of onboard storage, an electronic dictionary, and a 5.1 megapixel camera. The device features a slide-out keyboard which displays a numeric pad in the portrait orientation and doubles as full QWERTY in landscape. There's no word on pricing or availability for this bad boy as of yet, but we'll keep our eyes peeled and our ears to the ground. One more shot after the break.
Congratulations, Engadget! It seems you are back to full health!
i hope no one makes swine jokes because of your comment..
Oh no! Engadget just got infected with the swine flu computer virus.
way more memory than the Kindle LOL
It looks kinda like a Samsung Instinct with a slide out keyboard.
Biblio means book in Greek btw
Hooray for Geek-- I mean, Greek!
If available nationwide it seems like it will be a great competitor to the new Nokia N900, which has roughly the same specs.
No one has a real good idea on what the N900 specs will be besides 3G and an OMAP Cpu.
whew, looks like everything is back to normal. I just wish something good would have come out of the whole ordeal...
So, in other words, it is a cell phone.
There doesn't seem to be much that separates it from other Japanese cell phones. Those specs, while impressive by western standards (not many 960x480 cell phone screens around here), are pretty standard over there.
i really like how the numeric keypad doubles as a full qwerty keyboard even though it doesn't seem like it'd be very useful. the big d-pad in the middle seems a bit unnecessary too.
Clearly they got their inspiration from the iPod touch, which is also an e-reader.
Hahahaha!
How long before we see a 3- to 4-inch screen boasting WSVGA resolution? A year? Two? How long before the same size of screen makes the leap to 720p HD?
Personally, I look forward to the day when a 0.5-inch screen displays QuadHD! Wouldn't that just be awesome?
Well, by then we'll all have bionic vision capable of discerning the presence of an amoeba on a dinner plate, so yes it would be awesome!
Without E-ink, the battery will be empty in no time. Nice device but somewhat flawed. On the other hand my japanese wife got a Toshiba cellphone and its better than my Sharp.
Do you have other wives that aren't japanese?
Sophie, my scallop. But dont tell my japanese wife, she could eat her.
Pixel Qi is supposedly working on dual mode display technology which combines low-power B&W mode (e-paper) and high-resolution color LCD. This would be a great solution, for this type of device.
There is an engadget article about it here:
http://www.engadget.com/2009/04/23/olpc-graduate-pixel-qi-announces-3qi-three-in-one-screen-will-de/
meh. great if you want to read japanese ebooks. even some of the dedicated ebook readers made for japan don't support the formats the "rest of us" (gaijins) use, like ePub, mobibook, and especially not amazon's format. so who cares, since none of your ebooks will work on it.
You didn't mention that it's a phone...?
I don't believe it is a phone. It's being reported as an e-reader, and basically, it's a bit like hte Nokia N810.
I take that back, this site says it is a Phone.
http://www.electronista.com/articles/09/05/25/toshiba.biblio.handset/
it does look rather phone-ish. perhaps the ereader function is just a "bonus"
That is not an e-reader; I don't care what you say. That is a phone.