If you’ve been wondering where Sharp have been in the e-book and tablet industry, here they are. At a press release in Tokyo, they announced the name of their new e-book service and two Android-powered devices which will be run on this e-book service. The name of both the service and the devices will be Galapagos.

The “mobile type” device offers a 5.5-inch LCD screen (1,024 × 600 resolution) which will be suited to enable you to view paperback books. A trackball will be available so you can scroll through the pages and the colours offered are red and black.

The “home type” device with 10.8-inch LCD screen (1,366 × 800 resolution) will not offer a trackball, but you can flick through pages as you do with an iPad (which has a 9.7-inch LCD screen (1,024×768 resolution)). The screen will enable you to view magazine pages across two pages.

These devices are being advertised as “media tablets” rather than e-book readers and here is why. Both types of devices offer Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11b/g), enabling you to surf on the web, view “PC documents” and download apps that let you play games on the device. There is even a “social app” which enables you to communicate and share recommendations with other owners of the same device.

We are yet to receive more specifications, such as which Android version the devices will be released on, how much money you will have to shell out for the products, when they will be released and when those outside Japan will be able to grab these. A sale of 1 million units is expected.

Interested? Here is the promotional video for the devices by Sharp:

As for the Galapagos e-book service, it will begin in Japan this December. 30,000 newspapers, magazines and books are set to be available ready for this time.

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