This Android tablet could spell the end of Kindles as we know them

Carrie Marshall
·2 min read
Daylight DC1 android tablet.
Daylight DC1 android tablet.

Quick Summary

The Daylight DC-1 is an Android tablet with a Live Paper display that delivers E Ink quality at up to 60fps.

It's a lot more expensive than rival e-readers and tablets, though.

For all their joys, Kindle e-readers are fairly limited devices: even the most flexible Kindle, the stylus-friendly Kindle Scribe, is primarily a paper replacement rather than a do-everything device. And now a new Android tablet promises to do everything a Kindle does – and everything a tablet does too.

The tablet is the Daylight DC1, and it has a very different kind of display. Daylight calls it Live Paper, and while it looks like e-ink it's much faster. Where e-ink displays are generally designed to refresh only when you turn a page, this 10.5-inch 1,600 x 1,200 display can run at up to 60fps. That means it's capable of running proper apps as well as ebook ones, and a Wacom-style stylus is included so you can write as well as read.

The downside: it's monochrome. But then, so are Kindles.

Daylight DC1 Live Paper tablet: key specifications and price

The OS here is a custom Android called Sol:OS that's apparently capable of running typical Android apps (it's based on Android 13) but which has been designed to be lightweight and unobtrusive.

It's powered by a MediaTek Helio G99 and comes with 8GB of RAM, 128GB of storage and an 8,000mAh battery. However while the device includes some well known Android apps such as Pocket Casts, Audible, Spotify, Notion, Google Docs and Amazon's Kindle app it's unclear whether it will support the Play Store too.

It's a fascinating device and the first pre-orders will ship this August with wider availability in 2025. Daylight is also hinting that a phone with the same display is in development.

If it weren't for one thing it'd be a very compelling Kindle alternative. And that one thing is the price. This device will start at $729, which is more than twice the price of the most expensive Amazon e-reader, significantly more money than the Remarkable 2 writeable tablet and nearly four times the price of the Galaxy Tab A9+.

That makes it an exceptionally tough sell, no matter how impressive the display – and the Live Paper screen is genuinely impressive. You can see it in action here on Daylight's website.