I've been reading ebooks for over a decade. Kindle, Kobo, various Android tablets — I've tried them all. They're convenient. They're practical. But something has always felt off.
It took me a while to figure out what it was.
The thing we lost
When you open a physical book, you see two pages. Your eyes can wander. You get a sense of where you are in the chapter, how much is left, how the text flows across the spread. There's a rhythm to it — read the left page, read the right page, turn.
E-readers threw all of that away.
We got a single screen. One page at a time. No spread, no spatial sense, just an endless scroll of text broken into arbitrary chunks. It's efficient, sure. But it doesn't feel like reading a book. It feels like reading a very long text message.
The device I wanted
I kept imagining a simple thing: an e-reader that opens like a book. Two e-ink screens, a hinge in the middle. You open it, you see two pages. You close it, it protects itself. Like a book.
This isn't a new idea. People have been asking for it for years. There have been a few attempts — the GVIDO for sheet music, the eOneBook for manga, some prototypes that never shipped. They all failed or stayed super niche.
The big companies won't make it. Amazon, Kobo, Rakuten — they have no incentive. Their business model is selling content, not delighting readers with better hardware. A second screen doesn't sell more ebooks.
Then I found Diptyx
Earlier this year I discovered the Diptyx project — an open-source, dual-screen e-reader built by a maker who wanted the same thing I did. It's a beautiful project. ESP32-powered, 3D-printed enclosure, two e-ink screens, completely open.
It proved the concept works.
But Diptyx is designed for tinkerers. It's a kit, a DIY project, something you assemble and hack on. That's great for the maker community, but it's not a product I'd hand to my mom or put on a shelf at a bookstore.
I wanted something more... finished.
So I'm building Verso
Verso is my attempt at making that polished, consumer-ready dual-screen e-reader.
Same core idea — two screens, opens like a book. But built as a product, not a project. Injection-molded enclosure instead of 3D print. Refined hinge mechanism. Thoughtful details. Something you'd be proud to own and use every day.
I'm starting simple. The first version uses the same screens as Diptyx (no touch, no frontlight, 4 grayscale levels). Good enough for reading text, which is the core use case I care about.
If this works, I'll iterate. Frontlight, touch, maybe color eventually. But step one is proving I can build something worth using.
Why am I sharing this?
Because building hardware alone is hard and lonely, and I think the journey is interesting.
I'll be posting updates as I go — the wins, the failures, the technical rabbit holes. No fixed schedule, no marketing polish, just honest documentation of trying to make a thing.
If you've ever wanted a dual-screen e-reader, or you're curious about hardware development, follow along. I don't know where this goes, but I'm excited to find out.
This is devlog #0. Follow me on X for updates.