Large-screened E Ink devices have been tried by many companies in the past but none managed to gain ground on the academic market. Sony is also not a new player, but they are still trying their luck. Their latest product is a 13.3-inch flexible E Ink prototype device which is targeted at students and offices.

The device is coming with the new Mobius e-paper display technology with lightweight, shatterproof or rugged characteristics. With this new tech, Sony can make bigger display sizes without making the reader too heavy.

The slate measures in at 233 x 310 x 6.8 mm and weighs just 358 g, and it’s coming with 4GB of on-board storage (with a microSD slot) and a 1200 x 1600 resolution screen that’s an electromagnetic induction touchscreen, which allows you to do page swipes and menu selection. It also supports stylus input for making notes. And there’s WiFi for sharing notes, and its rechargeable battery is said to last for three weeks (with the wireless tech turned off), but the device currently supports only the PDF file format.

The device will be trialed at three Japanese universities, after which the final product will be available on the market but that might take a year or more.

But the question is whether this device will be appealing since there are many tablets out there with fast processors and high-resolution screens, as well as third-party apps. Sony’s own Tablet Z is one of the many options currently available. But if the price is not too much (the Sony Reader PRS-T2 costs $129.99), this new e-reader could be useful for many.

[Source]

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While many people have turned to their iPads and Android tablets for the purpose of reading e-books, there is still very much a market for the dedicated eReader. The e-ink display is so much easier on the eyes and the battery life is way better than what you’d get from a tablet. But, which one is best?

A quick comparison has been put together with some of the heaviest hitters in this space, taking a look at the Amazon Kindle Paperwhite, Kindle, Kindle Keyboard, Nook Simple Touch with GlowLight, Nook Simple Touch, and Kobo Glo. There are others to be considered, like those from Sony or other Kobos, but these are some of the most popular and their comparison should help narrow down your choices.

Display

All six of the eReaders featured in this overview use some form of e-ink technology for their displays rather than the regular backlit LCDs you find on tablets. You’ll also notice that they’ve all congregated on the 6-inch form factor, though you’ll find other variations from Amazon, B&N and Kobo that come in other sizes. The resolutions are mostly the same, though the Paperwhite and the Glo have significantly better PPIs. It’s also noteworthy that the Glo, Paperwhite and Nook with Glowlight are the ones with lit displays for dim reading situations.

Size and Weight

Since they all have six-inch displays, the overall dimensions of all these eReaders are roughly the same. They measure approximately 165 x 120 x 10mm with some variation and they all weigh right around 170-210 grams or so. The lone exception is the Kindle Keyboard, since it has that physical QWERTY keyboard beneath the display, stretching its length to 190mm and bumping its weight to 247g.

Storage Space

Not surprisingly, all six of the eReaders also have roughly the same amount of storage space. After all, e-books are very small files and you don’t need much space. The Paperwhite and Kindle both have 2GB, while the Kindle Keyboard has 4GB. The Nooks and Kobo Glo all have 2GB, plus a microSD expansion slot. That memory expansion could prove to be an important feature for people who want to carry a lot of content with them.

Wireless

They all have Wi-Fi, but you can opt to get the Kindle Paperwhite as a WiFi+3G mdel. The Kindle Keyboard is sold only as a WiFi+3G eReader.

Battery Life

The Kindle, Nook Simple Touch with GlowLight, and Kobo Glo all have batteries rated in the 4 week range, while the Kindle Paperwhite, Kindle Keyboard and Nook Simple Touch (sans GlowLight) last twice as long at about 8 weeks. Of course, your mileage will vary based on usage, especially when it comes to how much you use the lighting features. Charging any of these eReaders will take you 3 to 4.5 hours.

Other Considerations

If you want to read in dimly lit situations, you’ll want to opt for one of the eReaders that comes with some form of lit display. That’s the Kindle Paperwhite, the Nook Simple Touch with GlowLight or the Kobo Glo. If you want to take advantage of Amazon’s gigantic library, then you’ll want one of the Kindles. If you want a keyboard, then you’ll want to the Kindle Keyboard. Of course, there are some tradeoffs if you want, say, a keyboard and a backlight, because that just doesn’t exist.

Price

This will be a big deciding factor for many people. The cheapest of the bunch is the regular old Kindle that starts at $69, but you could also consider something like the Kobo Mini (5-inch) that starts at around the same price range. It is worth noting that all Kindles come with the “Special Offers” advertising that you’ll have to pay $20 to eliminate. If you hate ads, you’ll need to factor that into the price. It’s also debatable whether the Kindle Keyboard is really worth its premium just for a keyboard.

At the end of the day, which eReader you choose will really depend on several factors. Price is one, to be sure, but you’ll also want to think about size, backlighting, and the ecosystem. Whatever the case, it’s a good time to be a consumer, because we are offered a lot more choice than when the original Kindle was the be-all and end-all of e-book readers.

[Source]

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This comes straight from Walmart PR:

Recently, Walmart Stores, Inc. made a business decision to not carry current Amazon products beyond our purchase commitments and existing inventory.
Our customers trust us to provide a broad assortment of products at everyday low prices, and we approach every merchandising decision through this lens.
We will continue to offer our customers a broad assortment of tablets, eReaders and accessories at a variety of great price points. This decision is consistent with our overall merchandising strategy.

So, what are we supposed to glean from this? Well, we could think that it has to do with sales figures and the Kindle isn’t performing on Walmart’s shelves as well as they would have liked. It might also have to do with money in that Amazon might not be offering Walmart the kind of margins that it would like to have either. Then again, there could be a much more compelling reason.

Amazon directly competes with Walmart in just about everything. You want a physical book? Amazon and Walmart both sell that. You want a video game? They both sell that too. You want furniture, groceries, textiles, shoes, luggage, watches, light fixtures or bicycles? Both Amazon and Walmart sell all of that. In a sense, by stocking the Kindle family, Walmart becomes a bit of an Amazon showroom. This could be the same reason why Target decided to pull the Kindle from its shelves too.

Of course, I could be reading far too much into this, but I think it is amazing how Amazon has its hands in everything. You buy the tablet from them, so you can buy the digital content from them. Even if you buy an iPad or some other device instead, you can buy that product from Amazon too and there’s a good chance that you might get the Kindle app to buy more content. They get paid at every step of the way.

[Source]

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When it comes to reading in the digital age, generally most users either turn to an e-ink reader or use a tablet. For those that love e-ink, Sony has a brand new Sony Reader PRS-T2 which includes 2GB onboard storage, microSD for expansion, public library leading and new enhancements which include paper-like page turns and optimization to its 6-inch screen that is supposed to work better for long-term ad-free reading. For good measure, a few new social features are coming to the e-reader as well.

The PRS-T2 has a 600×800 E-Ink Pearl V220 antiglare screen with 16-level gray scale that is supposed to dramatically improve Sony’s e-reader line. The device also has built-in WIFI, a claimed two month battery life (with wireless off), and a new feature that lets you upload a short passage from your book directly to Facebook right from the device.

The Reader PRS-T2 features a 6-inch, 600 x 800 pixel resolution E-Ink Pearl V220 antiglare touch screen with a 16-level gray scale that promises improved continuous page turns and a smoother in and out pinch zoom. It comes pre-loaded with two English language and four translation dictionaries and supports ePub, PDF and TXT e-book formats, as well as JPEG, PNG, GIF, BMP image formats. There’s built-in Wi-Fi and a claimed battery life of up to two months with the wireless unit turned off (based on an average 30 minutes of reading per day).

The Sony Reader PRS-T2 is supplied comes in red,white or black and is priced at $129.99.

[ source ]

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Before you get too excited about curling up this e-reader to stuff into your backpack, realize that the flexible e-paper display here is still inside a reasonably stiff chassis. But that doesn’t mean it’s not without its benefits.

The first to use a new line of flexible screen displays from LG is the Wexler Flex One. The 6-inch monochrome panel has a resolution of 1024×768. While you can’t exactly fold up this e-reader, the flexible plastic display–at 0.7mm–is about a third the thickness as an equivalent glass e-paper display. It’s also just 14 grams and has proven to be quite durable.

There is an unofficial (below) that demonstrates some of its functions and you can see the e-reader can be bent and flexed a little. Aside from that, you have a rather blasse e-reader. It supports the usual range of formats, like EPUB and DJVU, and you navigate through the menus and page turns using the provided physical buttons; this is not a touchscreen. LG’s e-paper tech will soon find itself in other e-readers too. We just have to wait for the one we can wrap around our wrists.

[Source]

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And that appears to be the idea behind the Floater ePhone concept by designer Jeong Jaewan. What you get is a device with a standard 4.6-inch smartphone display, but this can be “unfolded” to give a 6-inch experience similar to the Kindle. The designer uses the word unfolded, but it looks more like the secondary display fits into a slot in the main unit. I’d worry that this makes the main device far too thick by today’s standards.

He also says that these are LCDs, but the concept images look a lot more like the e-ink displays that you see on eReaders like the Kindle or Kobo. Whatever the case, it looks a little too clunky for my tastes and it certainly doesn’t help that it’s called the Floater. Some things just don’t translate well.

[Source]

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When we cover shows like CES, there’s always an anxiety for us not to overlook or miss something worthy, or simply deserving special attention.  With a small team on the show floor just walking around a vast sea of gadgetry within acres of indoor Vegasness, it’s easy to let things slip by.  If you’re not attending, we’ll do our best to bring you the best of the best.  With that said, we will present you with a list of things you will probably not find at CES 2012, and a few other cool ones that you may stumble upon yourself if you happen to be attending.  Otherwise, let the gadget madness begin.

•  iPhone 5 and iPad 3 most likely — ok, definitely — will not be shown at CES.  However, LG Display, Toshiba, Sharp may show their 2048×1536 or similar ultra high “retina display” resolution screens made by IGZO technology that is being identified as a possible material choice for the iPad 3 and iPhone 5 screens. Then again, it could be the Gorilla Glass 2.

• Google’s Nexus Ice Cream Sandwich Tablet won’t show up at CES 2012 because, well, it’s just a rumor.  Originated by some unclear, off-hand remark by Google’s Eric Shmidt. We may see a prototype in some  form, but don’t expect CES to be the launching ground for a smoothing running Google ICS tablet. If the lousy performance of the first “official” ICS tablet is  any indication of things to come, it could be a revisit to the failure of last year’s unveiling of a half-baked Honeycomb running Motorola XOOM.

•  Google TV, if it even makes any appearance in the form of new set-top boxes running more or less streamlined Android Gingerbread (or Honeycomb), may also be quite short in the “appearance” department. Google is rumored to harness the powers of their YouTube in the form of YouTV or something, but it’s obvious that as long as there is no content to speak of, it’s non-appearance again. CES 2012 will be long gone when these deals with Disney, Anthony Zuiker (creator of C.S.I), Shaq, Tony Hawk, The Onion, Slate, and the Wall Street Journal will materialize.

• Under their customers’ pressure, manufacturers have started to unlock bootloaders for their Android devices recently. However, don’t expect them to stop locking the bootloaders in the first place: it won’t happen at any of their CES 2012 announcements or presentations, or even later.

• RIM’s Blackberry Playbook 2 won’t show up at CES 2012. Most probably, won’t show at all.  The next Blackberry OS 2.0 Beta for original Playbooks may show though, but chances are it will be the similar disappointment as the present 2.0 Beta. It’s sad to see how a great piece of hardware running the best embedded real-time OS known is going down the drain.

• Similarly, don’t look for a 7-incher HP Touchpad GO at CES 2012, or elsewhere. Qualcomm might demo webOS running on some of their newest Snapdragon S4 development platforms, but I doubt it.

• Color reflective (e-Ink type, only with colors) displays will show up, but again, mostly as prototypes just like they were shown a year ago.  Or two years ago, like in case with Liquavista. Contenders also include Qualcomm’s Mirasol (Kyobo eReader), but even with Hanvon/Ectaco releasing their Jetbook Color as a product beyond its national borders, it could be another act of non-appearance. Pixel Qi technology didn’t move an inch into the color direction since 2010, so we don’t expect to see anything at their exhibit at CES 2012, too.

What to look for at CES? The best batteries from major manufacturers, plus quad-core chips on the Samsung Exynos line, and TMSC production plans may give useful hints for what to expect from Apple’s next great products.

Creative/ZiiLABS might try once again to push their Jaguar tablet prototype based on their mysterious ZMS-20 chip with 48 stem cell graphic co-processors they demoed last spring, but that probably won’t happen.  An extremely mythical product called OLPC 3.0 may show as a claimed $100 8″ tablet, but it’s anybody’s guess whether it’s a real product or not.

The post CES 2012: What Not To Expect appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

Forbes’ contributor Todd Hixon follows TechCrunch analysis of the importance that perceived openness of the Android platform brings. The problem is very multi-faceted and complex, especially when taken in a perspective, and with inevitable comparison with closed-source platforms, such as Apple’s iOS and Microsoft’s Windows. Arguments of both analysts tend to agree that the openness of Android as its strong point is suddenly nowhere to be found when business and market considerations prevail. Sure, from a business standpoint, it really doesn’t matter what platform and development models are used in a given product: it’s an impact of a product itself that has an importance.

So stating an openness of an Android platform as a central point of Google’s Android ecosystem is no more than a marketing ploy from Google’s, and as such, it can be taken down any minute. This is exactly what happened when the Android Honeycomb source was closed several months ago and stayed so until recently. Did it help sales of Motorola XOOM running that very “closed” Honeycomb OS? I don’t think so. Will “open-sourced” Android Ice Cream Sandwich make it fare better? Hardly. Of course, there will be more powerful devices than the doomed XOOM, and they may sell much better with “open” Ice Cream Sandwich, but it’s clear that “openness” has nothing to do with the success of this or that product.

Both quoted analysts agree that Amazon with its Kindle Fire ignores every possible guideline of Google’s proclaimed  Android ecosystem: they build their own ecosystem that eliminates Google’s at every point and even block other competitive companies. Maybe in a lesser extent, but Samsung, HTC, Motorola, and many carriers do these “customizations” with an obvious target: re-directing revenue flow from Google’s coffers to their own.  There’s really nothing here that needs a winded, full-blown discussion and explanation. What the proclaimed openness of an Android ecosystem has to do with it? Nothing, it’s pure business.

So, next time you’ll hear the news that forthcoming Android Jelly Beans will be “source-closed” and put only on Google’s certified pieces of hardware, don’t be too surprised.

The post Consequences Of Android’s “Openness” appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

In its AppStore, Amazon chose to never show its competion’s eReaders apps: Wattpad’s, Kobo’ reader, and Bluefire ePUB and PDF reader.  After some talks of Amazon and Wattpad, the alternative eReaders now showing in the Amazon’s collection of apps, apparently available to download to Amazon Kindle Fires.

Sideloading of these and other eReaders apps from sources other than Amazon AppStore was never a problem, and sideloaded apps worked just fine. Yet sideloading procedures to do just that, or to bring in the full Google’s Android Market might turn out to be a tidbit too complex for the majority of Amazon Kindle Fire users.

It would be second step that Amazon takes with its recent firmware update to be more useful to Kindle Fire customers. First step was lifting a block that prevented Fire users to visit Google’s Android Market’s Web page. Does this mean you can now install Android Market apps to the Kindle Fire over the web? Not exactly, because there’s no simple way to associate the Kindle Fire with a Google account, which is how Google’s web-based Android Market links to devices.

Then again, a new firmware update for Kindle Fire (6.2.1) breaks the root access to the tablet which is needed to tweak Kindle Fire into recognizing a person’s Google account. So far, if your Kindle Fire was upgraded to 6.2.1 version of its firmware, there’s no easy procedure of rooting it according to the community of developers just yet.  Any alternative eReaders that are not associated with Wattpad’s were reportedly pulled back into hiding.

It’s a full-blown cat and mouse game again. However, it’s good to know that Amazon listens to their customer base, even if clumsy half-measures come out of it so far.

The post Amazon Stops Hiding eReader Apps appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

Now an Ectaco jetBook Color 9.7″ tablet may change the landscape for e-ink readers.

Geek.com and other blogs report very interesting features of this tablet coming to US in January 2012.

The unit is based on the Hanvon C920, which utilizes a 1600 x 1200 Triton color E Ink display that’s capable of interpreting two-finger touch gestures. Wi-Fi support is built in, and there’s a stylus onboard for those who want to take advantage of the jetBook’s handwriting recognition abilities to leave notes in the digital margins of their books.

The jetBook can handle loads of different file formats, including EPUB, PDF, MOBI, DOC, XLS, and HTML — JPG and PNG photos are also supported, as are MP3, WAV, and WMA audio files. Opera’s web browser is included, as is a text-to-speech engine, and there’s a microSD expansion to hold your ever-expanding library.

A pre-order page at Ectaco presents detailed specs of the device:

• Triton Color E Ink screen
• 9.7″ Display
• 1600×1200 resolution
• Load Your Own Content
• Support for: Adobe DRM 9.1, ePub, Mobi, PRC, RTF, TXT, PDF, FB2, djvu, JPG, Gif, PNG, BMP (more to come)
• Wi-Fi enabled with browser
• Fluent Text-to-Speech can read you any book
• 10,000 page turns on a single charge
• Support via microSD for up to 32GB
• Sleek protective carrying case included
• Underline and highlight text
• 50-state reading list
• Fully interactive SAT course
• “Overdrive” library access
• Wireless access to online textbooks, www.ck12.org and other resources
• Speed Reading course
• Talking Oxford Dictionaries
• Course of English and foreign language grammar
• Speech recognition and speech analysis Language Teacher and U-Learn courses that teach you a language step by step
• Pictured dictionaries for 38 languages
• Cross translator for 180 languages
• Vocabulary Builder
• Linguistic Crosswords
• Reference materials for Math, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Geography and Earth Science
• Interactive Periodic Table of Elements
• Graphing and scientific calculators

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