Sony digital paper (DPT-RP1) won both the 2017 Good Design Award and later on the 2018 IF Design Award. Sony has certainly advanced many of the original ideas that went into the design and creation of the Sony readers. The main idea at the heart of design of the Sony digital paper is to closely emulate the pen paper environment. This motivation is central to the design of the Sony digital paper (DPT-RP1).
It is important to bear in mind that even today most advanced Windows based laptops shipped with a pen are designated to write on glossy screens of laptops (e.g., the HP’s Spectre x360 and Microsoft Surface laptops series) and as such are doing a poor job at emulating the pen paper writing and drawing environment.
Glossy screens are designed with touch sensitivity in mind and hence cannot provide the optimal surface needed for writing and drawing simply because the surface is too smooth to provide the needed friction to tip of the stylus pens. This is a structural barrier which, irrespective of the most advanced stylus used, is not easy to overcome and hence the problem in emulating the pen paper environment. Sony dose a great job in addressing this short coming and indeed promotes the Sony digital paper (DPT-RP1) mainly on the bases of capturing the pen-paper experience.
In case you are interested in a bit of history of pen computing, Apple Newton, its evolution from Newton 100 to Newton 2001 should certainly be borne in mind while you head out to the Internet for further research.
Apple Newton 2000 with Apple Newton Keyboard
Apple Newton was a powerful pen computing device build with handwriting recognition technology as its core design feature. While Apple’s Newton 100 may have been slow, as it was the first generation of the Newton devices, Newton 130 and certainly Newton 2000 and 2001 series were very capable mobile pen computing systems that celebrated hand writing with added handwriting recognition technology at the core of Newton’s OS.
Apple Newton 2000 with build-in hand-writing recognition technology at the centre of Newton Operating System
