[snvzz]

Psion 5 is one of these devices w/o a true successor despite decades.

I am sure can do better with current tech, but instead we get features we don't need such as backlit screens, bloated OSs and way less battery life despite higher latencies and bigger batteries.

Just like calculators, which hit peak with TI89/92/v200.

[zozbot234]

I don't think you need a backlit screen these days, though? E-paper screens in smaller form factors are cheaply and widely available, commonly used for electronic price tags and such, and they could easily be used on a foldable PDA/cyberdeck type device.

[bartread]

I don't have experience of more recent E-paper displays but I regularly use a Kindle Paperwhite that's a few years old. It's absolulely great, but the screen refresh when you turn a page is really slow. That's fine for the use case of being an ebook reader, not so fine for a computer though - typing, for example, would be intolerable. If that could be fixed/improved enough then, I agree, E-paper displays could be great because they're incredibly clear, and very easy on the eyes.

[zozbot234]

Screen update latency can be optimized for the interactive use case. The default for e-readers is to do lots of full refreshes (slow) because they're less distracting than leaving small artifacts on the page after a partial update.

[bartread]

Yeah, that would make sense: if you can just update the parts of the screen that have changed it should be a lot quicker. Again, for an eReader, when you turn the page it makes sense to do a full screen update: not necessary in other cases. I do really love the idea of an ePaper screen for a laptop. It would be great on the eyes, and more energy efficient.

[snvzz]

>I don't think you need a backlit screen these days, though?

We didn't need it back then. Why would we need it now?

If anything, I'd expect current tech to give better contrast and readability than psion 5 series, at lower power, with higher resolution, while still running passive lit.