We’ve mentioned Qualcomm’s mirasol display technology multiple times here at CES and even received some hands-on with an already available model and those links are all available below. What we have here is the brand new Hanvon that is being touted as the “world’s thinnest and lightest color e-Reader”

The mirasol technology deploys a front-lit LED lighting system rather than the conventional backlights we are familiar with on smartphones, tablets and everything in between. With the mirasol front-lit technology it uses the surrounding and incoming light rather than fight against it.

The Hanvon C18 e-reader features a 5.7″ XGA format (1024 x 768 pixel resolution) mirasol display and of course Qualcomm’s 1.0 GHz Snapdragon™ S2 class processor. No details were given on release dates or pricing but we expect to see and hear more soon.

The “dual-touch” system uses electromagnetic resonance technology (ERT) to work with both a stylus and a finger. Proximity of the pen shuts down touch response, avoiding phantom-presses, and offers more accurate input: o.1mm, in fact.

It’s also supposedly 30-50 percent less expensive than capacitive touchscreens, easier to implement as it requires a simple antenna array over the sensor board that still provides 100-percent transmittance, and has a data report rate of 200 dots per second. The typical thickness of the control is less than 0.8mm and less than 2mm for the board, making for slimline slates too.

Hanvon is shipping the technology now, and expects it to show up in both ereaders and tablets.

Press Release:

HANVON UNVEILS INDUSTRY’S FIRST DUAL-TOUCH SOLUTION BY PURE ERT TECHNOLOGY AT SID DISPLAY WEEK 2011

Hanvon Dual-Touch ERT Technology Improves Touch Screen Flexibility, Accuracy and Manufacturing Costs

Los Angeles—May 16, 2011—Hanvon, a leading global eReader and touch technology manufacturer, today unveiled the Hanvon Dual-Touch ERT Technology, a revolutionary new method of enabling touch-based interfaces, at the Society for Information Display (SID)’s 49th International Symposium, Seminar and Exhibition (Display Week 2011). The Hanvon Dual-Touch ERT Technology is a flexible, highly accurate, lower-cost touch technology that outperforms comparable capacitive, resistive and acoustic pulse recognition technologies in precision, data report rate and ease of use. For the first time, Hanvon allows manufacturers to enable both electromagnetic resonance technology (ERT) and touch technology on a display. The new technology is currently commercially available to manufacturers in the U.S. and globally.

“With the increasing adoption of mobile, eReader and tablet products, touch screens have become the primary user interface,” said Liu Yingjian, president of Hanvon. “Consumers should be able to interact with their devices quickly and accurately and manufacturers should be able to meet those demands at a reasonable cost. Hanvon’s Dual-Touch ERT Technology is the first finger touch plus ERT in the market to deliver this experience to both consumers and manufacturers.”

The Hanvon Dual-Touch ERT Technology combines the functionality of touch with the accuracy and convenience of an ERT stylus, which shuts down “false” touches when in use. Hanvon brings the two technologies together, while allowing dual-touch input. Hanvon’s new technology meets consumer demand for finger touch displays while also lowering the cost to eReader manufacturers by adding a series of antenna sensors to the sensor board.

Hanvon’s Dual-Touch ERT Technology has a number of key benefits compared to other alternatives:

· Dual-touch interface—Touch displays integrating the technology will work with both ERT styli as well as traditional touch interfaces;

· Increased precision—Using an ERT input pen, accuracy is as great as 0.1mm;

· Lower cost—Compared to capacitive touch, Hanvon’s technology is 30-50 percent less expensive;

· Easier manufacturing—Hanvon’s Dual-Touch ERT Technology works by adding an antenna network just above the sensor board. This can easily be added to any existing manufacturing process.

“The eReader market has had rapid growth in recent years. DisplaySearch forecast the worldwide eReader display market will reach 98 million units in 2018,” said Dr. Jennifer Colegrove, vice president, Emerging Display Technologies at DisplaySearch. “Touch screen technologies with high transmissivity, low cost and capable of sensing both finger touch and pen writing will be widely adopted on eReader devices and tablet PCs.”

The Hanvon Dual-Touch ERT Technology uses less power than comparable technologies but offers superior precision and a more natural handwriting experience. It also offers a transmittance rate of 100 percent and a data report rate of 200 dots per second. The typical thickness of the control is less than 0.8mm and less than 2mm for the board.

The technology will be on display and available for demonstration at Display Week 2011 booth #1455.

Microsoft opened the Kinect SDK up to folks that like the hack the motion sensing camera to do more than Microsoft intended. The personal use SDK is set for launch in March and a commercial version is coming later. Samsung has added a cool new feature to the Galaxy Tab 10.1 with the ability to steam TV. The feature also lands on the Galaxy S II.

We learned early in the week for some leaks that new MacBooks were sitting on pallets in retail stores around the country. Apple had strict orders to not unpack the pallets until the unveil later in the week. A cool capacitive brush for the iPad has surfaced that is sort of like a stylus that allows the user to draw. The brush is from Nomad and each brush sells for $24.

I think most of us were expecting the Verizon iPhone to do much better than it has. The number of people that have downloaded a popular app called Instapaper has remained basically the same with the launch of the new iPhone. This suggests that most buyers for the Verizon iPhone are from AT&T. The Sony Vaio S series broke cover early in the week. The notebook packs a 13.3-inch screen and a battery good for 14 hours of runtime. The notebook uses up to the Intel i7-2620M, 8GB of RAM and up to 128GB SSD for storage.

The Apple iPad 2 is said to be releasing in June after a production delay according to an analyst. The delay is reportedly the result of last minute changes to the new iPad 2 expected to be unveiled next month. Spring Design is phasing out the Alex eReader that has been on sale for almost a year. The device will reportedly be retired over the next six months with no replacement expected at this time.

A dude has taken the menacing looking Megatron tank from Transformers 2 and created a DIY replica of the thing. This isn’t some small toy tank either, the tank weighs five tons. Windows 7 SP1 is now available. The new update for the Windows 7 OS is available for download and is 1.9GB.

Dell will start shipping the XPS 17 and XPS 15 laptops with Sandy Bridge inside on March 16. The machines will start at $1049 for the 17 and $899 for the 15. A cool iPhone accessory surfaced this week for bicyclists. The device is called the iBike and uses a waterproof case and sensors to turn the iPhone into a bike computer.

HP has unveiled new EliteBook and ProBook business notebooks. The notebook boasts up to 32 hours of battery life and can be had with Core i7, i5, and i3 processors and screens of 14-inch and 15.6-inch. The Motorola Atrix 4G got its obligatory teardown this week by iFixit. The innards of the cool smartphone are apparently easy to upgrade and repair.

Husqvarna unveiled a neat robot lawn mower mid-week called the Automower 305. The mower is battery powered and designed for small lawns. Razer unveiled the new Chimaera in standard stereo and 5.1 versions this week. The headphones are wireless and will work with the Xbox 360 and PCs.

An Apple event has been confirmed for March 2 that will see the new iPad 2 get unveiled for the first time. The event is taking place at 10am in San Francisco. An interesting alarm clock has turned up that has some IQ questions on it. The iQ Alarm alarm goes off until you answer the question on the screen correctly and if it’s a dumb morning for you things could get annoying.

A sweet little personal submarine turned up mid-week called the Ego. The thing has a boat on top that floats on the water and the cabin is underneath allowing the passengers a view of the undersea action. We posted up our review of the Motorola Xoom. Even lacking Flash and 4G we found a lot to like with the new tablet.

We went hands on with the Vodafone Galaxy Tab 10.1. The tablet was pretty nice and we liked it with final judgment reserved for a full review. Apple officially unveiled the new 2011 version of the MacBook Pro notebooks. The most notable new changes are AMD graphics and a new IO port called Thunderbolt.

Sprint has halted the over-the-air update to Froyo for the Samsung Epic 4G. The update was stopped after complaints that the update was breaking the phones. We spent a bit of hands-on time with the 15-inch MacBook Pro with Thunderbolt. It’s cool, expensive, and final judgment will come with the review of the machine later.

Fujitsu announced late in the week that its Stylistic Q550 slate PC with Windows would be launching this sprint. The tablet will start at about $800. The MacBook Pro that launched during the week has already been torndown by iFixit. The machine has new RAM inside. The notebook is certainly well packed inside the metal chassis.

An interesting universal sleeve for gadgets turned up called the NXE ActiveSLEEVE. The thing is designed to fit on the arm while people workout and keep their smartphone and other gadgets safe. Skype To Go launched late in the week and allows the user to make calls at lower rates without having to have a web connection or a 3G area. The service works on landlines and any mobile phones.

The world’s first robot marathon will be held in Osaka, Japan. The event will see the humanoid walking bots traveling 26 miles over four days on an indoor track. Verizon CEO Dan Mead has stated that LTE products are coming from Apple. Mead didn’t offer any product names or a timeframe.

Google changed its search algorithm this week to combat content farms. The fear is that some legitimate sites might be caught in the change. Thanks for reading this week’s edition! See you next time. 

The A112 is powered by a 720MHz ARM11 processor paired with 2GB of internal storage and a microSD slot; there’s also WiFi and Bluetooth, USB and HDMI. The 3,300 mAh battery is supposedly good for up to 8hrs of reading, though it’s not clear how long it will power the HPad for video playback or browsing. At first glance, lower camera resolutions aside, it’s hard to see where the A112 differentiates itself from the A116, beyond the price: the tablet Hanvon showed off at CES was expected to launch for around $350, while Hanvon is supposedly expecting the A112 to retail for around €399 ($545) when it drops in the second half of the year.

[via Android Community and via The Digital Reader]

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To see more Daily Slash posts, click here: [The Daily Slash] or here: [SlashGear Morning Wrap-Up]

The device has a 7-inch capacitive touchscreen display, with a resolution of 1024x 600. Under the hood, there’s 512M mDDR, and two 2GB of internal memory. There’s a microSD card slot, which can support a card all the way up to 32GB. As for the Operating System, it will run Android 2.2 or 2.3, depending on what you want. Both versions will be heavily customized by Hanvon, though.

There’s a 1.3MP camera on the front of the device, and a 5MP on the back. There’s a microUSB port, and mini-HDMI port. The battery, we were told, will last 6 hours playing video, or 8 hours reading. But, they stressed that these were still estimations. Check out the hands on images below to see the Hanvon HPad A116 up close.

We were told that the device would cost $350 when it goes on sale later this year.

The TouchPad B20 features a 10.1-inch display, and has an Intel Atom Z530 processor clocked at 1.6GHz inside. Windows XP Home Edition 32-bit is pre-installed. The TouchPad B20 also features 1GB DDR2, and a 120GB 1.8-inch SATA hard drive at 4200rpm. There’s a 2MP camera on the back, and no front-facing camera. There’s two USB ports, an earphone and microphone port, and an HDMI port. The whole system is skinned by Hanvon.

Our time with the device was limited, but we could tell that the tablet is light enough, but with Windows on board, and the $899 price tag we were told, there probably won’t be a line growing to get their hands on this device. Check out the hands on images below.

Battery life is said to be up to 15 days of standby or over 10,000 pages of reading, while storage is via microSD card (up to 32GB). There’s also text-to-speech, PDF annotation and Chinese to English translations. No word on pricing or availability.

Press Release:

HANVON UNVEILS INDUSTRY’S FIRST LARGE-SCREEN, HIGH-RESOLUTION EREADER AT CES

Hanvon WISEreader E920 Brings Crispness and Clarity to eReaders

Las Vegas—January 6, 2011—Hanvon, a leading global e-book manufacturer, today unveiled the Hanvon WISEreader E920, the industry’s first large-screen, high-resolution e-book reader at CES 2011 (LVCC South Hall Booth #36062). The Hanvon WISEreader has a 9.7 inch screen and 200 dpi resolution, which provides some of the crispest and sharpest images ever seen on an E Ink-powered device. The eReader will be available by June 2011. “Hanvon introduced the world’s first color E Ink reader, and we are continuing to innovate with our large-screen, high-res eReader,” said Mr. Liu Yingjian, president of Hanvon. “Consumers should expect clear, detailed text and images from their e-books, readable in bright light conditions, and the WISEreader E920 delivers this experience.” The Hanvon WISEreader is the perfect eReader for the traveler on the go, or those that do not want to remember to recharge their e-book reader. The WISEreader has a standby battery life of 15 days, and can read more than 10,000 pages before requiring a recharge. The WISEReader will support extended MicroSD cards up to 32GB, allowing consumers to store more than 10,000 e-books on the reader. It provides all the traditional benefits of an E Ink reader and also supports a variety of formats, will speak in TTS voice, allows users to comment in PDF at any time and make instant Chinese-English translations. About Hanvon Hanvon Technology Co., Ltd. (Hanvon) was established in 1998 and is a high-tech enterprise that is dedicated to the development and production of intelligent products, technologies and services in the field of man-computer interaction. Hanvon is a leader in the global handwriting recognition market and entered the e-book market in 2008. With a full range of technological integration capabilities, it has developed a variety of e-book products and occupied 95% of China’s e-book market and become a leading global e-book manufacturer. Additional information is available at www.hanvon.com.

The device has a 9.7-inch display capable of showing (muted) colors and basic animations, though the underlying E Ink technology is still insufficient for smooth video playback. Instead, it seems Hanvon will be targeting ebooks and business use, suggesting it could be used for viewing and editing PowerPoint presentations while on the move.

That’s aided by a hybrid touchscreen supporting both electromagnetic pen and finger touch input, a notes app and address book, along with text-to-speech and Chinese-to-English translation. There are also some basic games, according to Hanvon’s press release, though they’re not specified. North American availability is presumably still expected in March 2011, though a more affordable price tag of $440 was initially suggested for the WiFi + 3G version of the ereader.

[via DigiTimes]

Press Release:

Hanvon Grandly Launched the World’s First Color Electronic Paper Book

(November 10, 2010, Japan) Hanvon Technology Co., Ltd. (Hanvon) was established in 1998 and is a high-tech enterprise that is dedicated to the development and production of intelligent products, technologies and services in the field of man-computer interaction. In the global handwriting recognition market, Hanvon always is a leader. In 2008, with its strong technological strength, Hanvon entered the e-book market. With a full range of technological integration capabilities, it has developed a variety of e-book products and occupied 95% of China’s e-book market and become a global leading e-book manufacturer. In order to better develop international markets, on November 10, 2010, Hanvon grandly launched the world’s first color electronic paper book at the FPD International Exhibition in Chiba, Japan.

The Hanvon color electronic paper book is the world’s first large-screen high-resolution color e-book. It is one of preferential high-end business and office products. The whole e-book is equal to the size of the A4 paper. Its screen uses the latest Triton screen launched by E-INK, having a wholly new window-type user interface and an electromagnetic pen + finger touch, making the operation more conveniently and smoothly. Compared with the traditional black and white E-INK screen, Hanvon color e-book can restore the true feelings of paper reading to a greater degree. Meanwhile, it inherits all the advantages of the E-INK screen. This product can support a variety of formats, speak in TTS voice, comment in PDF at any time and make instant Chinese-English translation. It can allow users to feel like reading color paper documents. It also contains notes and address books to provide better business and office services to users. It has WIFI and a 3G wireless network to make users enjoy online life anytime and anywhere. With the constant development of e-book and screen technologies, Hanvon color e-book can now become one of paperless office devices. At the same time, it can replace the function of printers and has a variety of small game features to provide users entertainments at their spare time.

With the rapid development of high-tech electronic technology, Hanvon has become a star brand in the e-reader market. Hanvon electronic paper books not only have advantages in quality, functionality and the performance vs. cost ratio, but also integrate Hanvon handwriting technology to facilitate users to comment, modify and excerpt contents and can read and write. The Hanvon electronic paper book is not only a revolutionary e-reader but also your private library that can go with you at any time. It can enable you to carry thousands of electronic data with you and easily read them anytime and anywhere. In order to meet the needs of e-reading in more human ways, Hanvon will continue to be dedicated to the research and development of color e-books to provide consumers with more perfect reading experience.

E Ink had previously promised that their color e-paper screens should be available by the end of 2010, though the Hanvon model will miss that launch window. Instead it’s expected to arrive in China in March 2011 – we’re guessing it’ll be brought to CES 2011 in January with great fanfare as well – with a reasonably hefty price-tag of $440, though that will also include WiFi and 3G connectivity for downloading content while mobile.

That price is still cheaper than the iPad in China, though the Hanvon ereader isn’t being targeted as a direct alternative. Instead, it’s more dedicated to ebook duties, and can manage the same sort of battery life as its greyscale cousins since the underlying E Ink screen is the same, merely with a color filter over the top. The panel is unable to display smooth video, only basic animations, and clarity is reduced because of the filter, but it should still be more outdoor-visible than a regular LCD screen.

[via Engadget]

Spec-wise, the B10 is generally in line with mainstream netbooks.  That means a 250GB hard-drive, WiFi b/g, Bluetooth, a 1.3-megapixel webcam and a pair of USB 2.0 ports.  We’ll have to wait and see what the 1.3GHz Celeron ULV processor does with the B10′s 4,800mAh Li-ion battery, though, since Papyrus are coy on runtime estimates.

Hanvon memorably launched the B10 by smashing a huge Apple logo ice-sculpture, though they’re still yet to make entirely clear what makes the Windows 7 slate a better prospect than the iPad.  We’re not saying the Apple slate is unassailable, we just think rivals need to take a leaf out of Steve Jobs’ book and spend more time putting their gadgets into some sort of meaningful use-scenario context that would-be consumers can understand.

Video comparison after the cut

The demo runs through browsing, text entry using on-screen keyboards, YouTube access (either via the full site, on the Hanvon slate, or the iPad’s dedicated YouTube app), messaging and Google Earth, as well as a few other tasks.  While at first glance you might assume the mobile-centric iPad would easily overshadow its rival, the Hanvon puts in a surprisingly good showing.

Running desktop apps has an impact on usability in some places – Google Earth being one of them, with the iPad version obviously suited to the Apple slate’s screen – and the video doesn’t drill down into some of the smaller, trickier controls within Windows 7 which might still be better suited to a mouse than a fingertip, but we’re still left reasonably impressed.  The Hanvon slate, incidentally, appears to be the BC10C.

[via Redmond Pie]

First shown off at CeBIT 2010 back in March, the TouchPad B10 eschews ARM in favor of an Intel ULV743 1.3GHz processor paired with 2GB of RAM and Intel GMA 4500 graphics.  It has a 10.1-inch 1024 x 600 capacitive touchscreen with multitouch support, between 250GB and 320GB of 7,200rpm HDD storage and both WiFi and Bluetooth.  There’s also a 3-megapixel webcam, Mini HDMI port, a couple of USB ports and a sub-1kg weight.

For all of the press-teasing drama of the launch, Hanvon seemingly failed to explain exactly why Windows 7 made for a better mobile tablet experience than, say, iPhone OS.  That’s the harder message they have ahead of them if they want the B10 to be a sales success: taking an Apple ice sculpture into every would-be customer’s home, and then smashing it in front of them, probably isn’t a realistic marketing technique.

[via Shanzai]

Two of those alternative tablet choices will be the Hanvon B10 and F10 tablets. Jkkmobile reports that it has received an update on the status of the machines. The B10 will run an Intel ULV743 CPU at 1.3GHz and is in volume production now. Shipping for the device is set at the end of May for China, but when the rig will hit the US is unknown.

The F10 will run an Atom Z530 CPU at 1.6GHz and is not yet set for volume production and it could be another three months before production kicks off. The F10 will not have multitouch and will only work with the supplied pen though it and the B10 will come with a mouse pointer.

Video review after the cut

In fact, the BC10C only managed 3.5hrs in this pre-production sample.  That’s in no small part because there’s no CPU throttling in use: the 1.3GHz chip runs at full speed all the time.  Of course, that shouldn’t be the case in shipping versions, which will begin to hit Asia come March 25th.

Even with patchy runtimes, jkkmobile is still very impressed with the Hanvon slate.  It’s key strengths are web browsing and multimedia – there’s an HDMI output for using the Intel GMA 4500 graphics with an external HDTV or monitor – and as long as you can stomach the US $877 price it looks like this is a table you’ll actually be able to buy in the near future.  Considering the number of competitors we see once or twice then never hear of again, that’s impressive enough by itself.

Video demo after the cut

The larger BC10C has various programable buttons around the edges, along with an HDMI connector, and an optical mouse integrated into the bottom bezel.  Actually the Celeron-based tablet is slightly smaller (albeit thicker) than its Atom counterpart.  Inside there’s a 250GB hard-drive.

As for the Hanvon BA10E, that will have both a capacitive multitouch display option and an active digitizer option for improved handwriting recognition.  Around the edges there are the same array of buttons, USB and HDMI connectivity, while inside there’s a 120GB HDD and both front and back cameras.

Price-wise, the BA10E will come in at €500-600 while the BC10C will be €600-700.  No word on specific release dates, but since Hanvon are handing out review units we’re guessing they’re ramping up for a launch.

That’s in no small part due to its aluminum casing, though the software side of things seems to need some work as the multitouch looks pretty sluggish to our eyes.  According to Hanvon the slate will arrive in China come Q4, but there’s no word on exactly how much it will cost nor whether we’ll see it in the US or Europe.

Supported file formats include TXT, HTML, PNG, JPG, PDF, XEB, CEB and MTXT, with a standard 1GB SD card used for storage and enabling easy memory upgrades.  A mini USB port is used for data transfers; unfortunately there’s no integrated wireless connectivity.

The active digitizer means readers can add handwritten notes and diagrams to documents, and there’s apparently a painting app in there too.  MP3 playback is also possible.

The Hanvon N510 is priced at around 2000RMB ($295); it does not yet appear to be available outside of China.

Press Release:

Hanvon Introduces World’s First Five-Inch Electronic Book using Electrophoretic Technology

Hanvon N510 eBook using E Ink Vizplex(TM) Display successfully debuted on the Shenzhou-7 Spacecraft

BEIJING –(Business Wire)– Nov 03, 2008 Hanvon the leader in handwriting recognition products is pleased to announce the introduction of the world’s first 5” Electronic Book series, based on the revolutionary E Ink Vizplex Display. This pioneering effort combines the best of electromagnetic pen input and electronic paper display into an ultra portable electronic book aimed as mass markets.

Hanvon’s electronic book development team reports that the N510 consumes very little power, has a paper like appearance, offers 180 degrees viewing and is only 11mm thick. The Hanvon N510 Supports TXT, HTML, PNG, JPG, PDF, XEB, CEB, MP3, MTXT formats on its 167 PPI, SVGA (800 x 600 pixels) electronic paper display. The eBook also features a 1GB SD card and a mini USB port.

“The Hanvon N510 allows you to carry an entire library in your pocket,” said Mr. Wang Bangjiang, General Manager for Hanvon. “We are honored and proud that our eBook was used in space during the historic Shenzhou-7 space mission this month. This speaks volumes about the quality of our N510 eBook.”

Designed for outdoor use, the N510 features a sunlight readable electronic paper display in a rugged yet slim package. The high definition display not only has a paper like appearance, it has no EMI generating backlight/inverter making it ideally suited for hours of reading.

The Hanvon E-book series is designed to allow the user to not only read books but also input notes, edit and even paint electronically using Hanvon’s advanced digital input technologies. The device also features audio listening capability with MP3 support.

Priced at about 2000RMB ($295 approx), the Hanvon N510 is aimed at users that want the flexibility and convenience of having hundreds of books and documents at their finger tips, at a reasonable price. Finally, the Hanvon N510 eBook is an environmentally responsible alternative to ordinary paper.