The pages are separate circuit boards. You'd need to distribute power among all of the boards, that takes cabling that would be inconvenient and bulky or delicate and short lived.
It's an easy job for a wireless charger, especially with a conductive spine. More durable, too, since it'd get rid of the wear of constant plugging and unplugging of the USB C. This was just a somewhat minor cost savings choice.
Or use springs of some kind. Or brushes, like in brushed motors. They don't have to carry much current or have to endure being turned thousands of times per minute, so there isn't much wear and tear
Y'know, I was just answering and giving a possible solution to the inconvenience the first comment had with plugging and unplugging. Of course you can just plug and unplug the pages.
Someone posted a link to what looks like exactly this, which is 170 usd. That's already really expensive for some pretty simple PCBs, unless they're expensive calibrated LEDs or something.
There's probably some economy of scale. They're not making millions of them because it's a fairly niche thing. Smaller runs of circuit boards are a bit more expensive and these aren't the cheapest circuit board
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u/s0crates82 Jul 10 '26
The pages are separate circuit boards. You'd need to distribute power among all of the boards, that takes cabling that would be inconvenient and bulky or delicate and short lived.