Samsung’s announcement that it plans to release an e-book reader called Papyrus means it is at least the seventh company to hop on the digital-book bandwagon.With touchscreen capability and an e-ink screen, the Papyrus will cost just $300, Samsung says, making it even cheaper than the Sony Reader and the Amazon Kindle.

Papyrus appears to be a full fledged PDA, with all sorts of little applications that reminded us of the original Palm Pilots back in the day. The screen is about five inches, with a touch screen display. Writing on the screen and selecting icons have a slight lag, but no worse than most first generation Palm Pilots. It’s a ton faster than the Sony PRS-707 and the iRex Iliad when it comes to touch screen technology.

The real selling point for the Papyrus will be combining the long battery life of e-paper with the power of a PDA. A lot of people are speculating that Samsung will eventually add wireless connectivity to the Papyrus, but so far it uses USB cables for bringing information to and from a computer. [via epapercentral, wired]