Remember Fujitsu’s color e-book technology we saw last year? Well, the tech giant announced Wednesday that the reader (or e-paper mobile terminal as they call it) will be available shortly to purchase in Japan, under the name of FLEPia.

The FLEPia features an 8-inch XGA touchscreen e-ink display which is capable of producing 260,000 colors, housed within a body that measures less than half an inch thick (12.5mm). Fujitsu’s reader packs in Bluetooth and WiFi (b and g) connectivity, which you could use not only for downloading e-books, but also web browsing, email, spreadsheets and the like as it includes Windows CE 5.0.

The FLEPia will get up to 4GB of storage via an SD card, comes with a stylus for touchscreen control and will get up to 40 hours (2400 page turns) of battery life.

Fujitsu has not only developed a great product here, but yet another category of product. The FLEPia seems to lie somewhere between Amazon’s Kindle and a tablet PC, or perhaps a high-end PDA. Calling it simply an e-book reader doesn’t seem to do it justice.

The FLEPia will be available from April 20 in Japan, but with a price of ¥99,750 ($1,000), it probably won’t be leaping from the shelves.

Sources:
Fujitsu (Press Release) and Engadget Japanese