Amadana, Nxtpaper and Boox

Instruction Set, IFA edition

Welcome back to Multicore. This is Instruction Set for Tuesday, September 9th.

I have a new plan for Instruction Set. I like writing these roundups, but I feel like the weekly cadence doesn’t work; sometimes there’s too much to give each topic the air it deserves, and sometimes it’s a stretch to fill the space.

Here’s what I’m going to do: rather than hoping that every seven days will be equally cool or noteworthy, every Instruction Set will have seven cool or noteworthy things in it. I’ll add them to the list as I see them and send each edition out when it’s ready. This way I can focus on both quantity and quality.

Let’s start with the annual IFA tech show in Berlin, which wrapped up today.

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First up, last year Acer acquired somewhat notable Japanese design brand Amadana, which used to work on various flip phones and so on back in the day but is now best known, at least to me, for designing coffee equipment that’s showcased in the company’s own Beasty Coffee cafe not far from where I live in Tokyo.

Acer showed off its first Amadana products at IFA, and well, they’re a start:

Here’s the 27ART0 P1, which is a 27” (neutral) 144Hz (good) 1080p (bad) LCD monitor. It’s very slim at just 8mm thick, though, and the stand is at least quite cute.

This is the 16APM1Q-J, a 16” 60Hz 1080p portable LCD screen. I guess it’s a better-looking take on the idea than most I’ve seen, but we’re not really breaking any new ground here.

Hopefully this range does better for Acer than the Balmuda Phone, the last time a stylish Japanese kettle maker attempted to get into consumer electronics. Bringing the Amadana designers in-house at a company who knows how to make this stuff is probably a better way to go about it.

Still, I think it could use a little more of the energy from these handsets, which were all released in collaboration with NEC and NTT Docomo between 2008 and 2010:

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The Verge got a look at the next version of my beloved Boox Palma, which I’m a little conflicted about because it has two big new features that seem like they’ll fundamentally change the nature of the device.