Amazon made a big splash in e-reader land last week with the release of its first-ever color Kindle. When it comes to devoted e-readers here in the States, Amazon is very nearly the only game in town. Plenty have tried to knock the Kindle off its perch, but the brand maintains around 80% of the market.
Bookcase is not an e-reader, however. The latest bit of tech novelty from Astropad is a case that turns a smartphone into a book — or at least the approximate dimensions of one. It’s a bit of plastic that lets one hold a smartphone the way they would a Kindle.
The $50 ($40 at launch) price tag is steep, but Astropad has included a few related features to make Bookcase more than a hunk of plastic. Between the handles is a MagSafe mount, which works with iPhones and plenty of Android devices.
There’s also an NFC chip inside, which will trigger a “companion app” on a nearby phone. That doubles as kind of a bookshelf for various reading apps. It can also be used to trigger Do Not Disturb settings on compatible devices.
Bookcase is one of those strange products that fills a hole you never realized existed. It seems silly at first, but the more you think about it, the more you suspect that something like this could actually be kind of useful.
It’s a sentiment that applies to much of what Astropad does. The hardware firm hit the scene in 2017 with a solution that turned iPads into drawing tablets for Macs. The company made a bigger splash with Luna Display, which turned the tablet into a second screen — a feature Apple would soon Sherlock out of existence.
More recently, the company has trafficked in things like an iPad drawing stand and an add-on that mimics the sensation of drawing on paper. Bookcase fits right in with those offerings. It’s set to start shipping later this year.