The number of electronic readers grew by two last month as a pair of companies provided sneak peaks of their devices.

The first, Readius, was developed by Netherlands-based Polymer Vision, which previewed the pocket-sized reader at the Ifra International e-reading conference in Paris.

The foldable device uses E Ink’s Vizplex electrophoretic imaging film, the same material used by Amazon.com’s Kindle e-reader.
 

SmartEditions on tap

Readius weighs 4 ounces, expands to a 5-inch black-and-white display and sports a resolution of 320 by 240 pixels.








Photos: NewspaperDirect, Plastic Logic
Polymer Vision and Plastic Logic both previewed electronic readers last month. NewspaperDirect adapted its PressDisplay application to allow subscribers to read its electronic editions on Readius.
 

Polymer said the device supports HTML, PDF and ASCII files and includes integration with several other applications that span an RSS reader, e-mail, audio player and image viewer.

The device also acts as a cell phone and can double as a USB storage device.