Asus ebook tips up

ANYONE WHO VENTURED OUT for a newspaper on Sunday morning might have witnessed an article in The Times discussing what had been a pretty closed book at Asus, that is, the DR-570 OLED e-reader.

In an article about e-books in a newspaper, and oh, how the print paper's editor must have loved subbing that, the paper revealed that it had got its mitts on an interesting item that hadn't even bothered to put in an appearance at CES.

The Times reports that the device should be out before the end of this year and adds, "Asus says it has developed a 6in, high-brightness, OLED colour screen that should run for a whopping 122 hours on one battery charge - and that's not just when displaying text but under real-world conditions, such as running Flash video over its built-in wi-fi or 3G. If that claim stands up, it would make this game-changing device nearly as energy-efficient as today's monochrome readers."

The dead-tree newspaper has a photo of the device showing an electronic copy of Elle magazine, but no real stats. We have put in a call to the firm's PR company in a bid to get more information, but so far have not had a response.

Electricpig, however, suggests that it will have a 5.7-inch OLED display offering 768x1024 resolution, 4GB of flash storage, 412MB of RAM, a 1530mAh battery and an SD/SDHC card slot. Apparently it will weigh some 200g, and has a 0.03 second refresh rate.

Take that, newspaper! µ