While we are use to seeing Android phones from smaller, lesser known manufacturers, the YotaPhone is one special phone which features dual-screens.

The ‘main’ screen on the YotaPhone is an LCD unit while the secondary screen is a bookworm friendly E Ink display, but don’t kid yourself in to thinking that the E ink display is just for reading as the YotaPhone team have some great ideas up their sleeves.

As you can see above the rear screen can be used to coax a smile, or duck face, from your photography subjects. Currently the Android powered YotaPhone is still a little buggy in use, but the idea and the drive to make things happen is their.

Keep your eyes peeled for more YotaPhone news as development moves forward to a possible end of year launch.

[ Source ]

The post Russia’s YotaPhone is the Most Innovative we’ve Seen Yet appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

The next wave of ePaper may be losing some of that old fashioned appeal. Current ePaper readers such as the Kindle need light in order to be read, just like when you’re looking over an actual newspaper.  With an increasing amount of eReaders (tablets) boasting backlight displays, most of us like to keep eInk a bit more traditional; like having to read with the aid of other light.  Reading without backlighting is also easier on the eyes.

Flex Lighting has a technology that could change ePaper as we know it. They make a very thin layer that distributes light evenly from hidden LEDs over the devices’s surface. Light is aimed toward the screen, and battery draw is low as only one or two LEDs are used. This extremely thin, flexible technology allows this to be practical for almost any display.  Based on existing technology, this method is said to be better than current lighting based on the same technology.

There is no word on how this technology will actually turn out when implemented with next generation eReaders.While it sounds great in theory, it seems that no one outside of Flex Lighting has gotten their hands on any prototypes yet.

The post The Next Wave Of ePaper appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

Among 2011′s impending hail of new tablet releases, there’s one slate that’s going to stand out among the rest in its single-function, single-colour glory: The NoteSlate.  An upgrade to the Boogie Board of yesteryear.

I fondly remember that day near the end of 2009 when me and my at-the-time girlfriend discovered our Sony Reader Touch’s drawing program. We wrote silly notes and drew silly pictures with the little stylus on the little screen; it brought us whole minutes of cheap laughs and good times.

Come June, the NoteSlate will take those good times to the next level – or a lower level. Possibly a different podium at the same level.

It basically looks like a tiny, sleek 13″ chalkboard or whiteboard, depending on which colour scheme you choose. Its touchable 750 x 1080 eInk display (whether that’s the same E Ink-brand display you’ll find in the Kindle is yet to be announced) runs almost right to the edges, giving some style to your either black-on-white or white-on-black doodles. That is, until the release of three single-colour-on-black versions are released down the road, as well as an all-three-colours-on-black version. It’s also got a full-sized stylus, offering the option of drawing or writing comfortably as opposed to solely using your fingers.  A USB charging port, SD slot where screen captures are saved to, and a slot for the stylus.  The three buttons across the bottom are Save Picture, View Last and Erase.

But that’s all it can do: Be the medium for and storage place of your notes and drawings. I mean, it plays MP3s, too. But what doesn’t these days?

That said, it’s not all bad. At $99 and with 180 hours of battery life, that’ll get you through more than a semester’s worth of college lectures on a single charge and within a student’s budget. And they do have big plans for the device.

Its initial release will be the bare-bones note taker, but it’ll be an open-sourced bare-bones note taker. Version 1.5 plans for PDF and text viewing capabilities, with version 2 incorporating OCR handwriting-to-text. Once this happens, it may really carve out a niche in the student demographic.

[Engadget, Zive via NoteSlate

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The Kobo eReader book library display screen - Photo: Fabrizio Pilato

Since the beginning, Kobo was a platform. The eReader hardware only came in to the picture later on, as a way to affordably introduce people interested in the technology. Kobo eReader is already available for the Apple iPad, and they intend to release their app for other platforms like Android. Eventually making themselves known as an eReader OS for third-party devices sometime this summer.

The standard for eBooks and newspapers is epub. This is essentially an HTML file, epub and pdf books are accessible from the Kobo platform, this covers 99% of books on the market. The first iteration of Kobo eReader will not support your own word or powerpoint files for example, but they plan to bring other formats to the eReader down the pipeline.

eReaders on the market today are around $300 and up. Kobo wanted to give users an opportunity to get in to eReading at half the price, and eventually bring that down to even $100. According to Michael Serbinis, CEO of Kobo Inc. the average consumer buys a book a month. “We wanted to bring out a device that was affordable, physically great to hold and to have, not looking like a piece of cheap electronics, and a device that would be a great experience for that single piece of reading.” Serbinis told Mobile Magazine in a telephone interview last week.

This means Kobo is not going up against any specific hardware device, as they will be deploying across various styles of eReaders in the near future. That alone changes the companies perceived business model up until this point.

The Kobo future will be an app (like on the iPad) and also a complete OS/firmware package. It will support Wi-Fi/3G for connectivity, some of these tablets have gorgeous screens, LCD or OLED, not just E-Ink. Certainly color is far richer and higher resolution screens will make more appealing devices, but that will just allow Kobo to really make a richer user experience. The OS that is on the Kobo eReader has the ability to support embedded video, audio, animations, a richer style of content. That doesn’t make sense for a bestseller novels, for richer content like cookbooks or kids books, text books, and magazines it begins to be relevant. The majority of magazines released so far on eReaders have been the text kind, New Yorker is one of the few supporting different formats, “multimodal.” Serbinis says. Kobo’s book store will allow you to take these books to other devices that support their platform, not lock you in to one piece of hardware or device.

My one gripe about the Kobo eReader device itself is the refresh. You get a black animation sweeping across the display, this is just an artifact of the eInk screen, the next generation of Eink screens will remove that. So until then we just have to live with it. Freescale and Marvel have apparently figured out engineering solutions for the hardware to get around this problem. “I think we will see the next gen of eInk be even easier on the eyes, and will have even longer battery life. The huge advantage of the device is 2 weeks on one charge. The power down will be updated with new firmware update to power up much quicker, right now 30-45 seconds to get the screen.” Added Serbinis.

The Kobo eReader's E-Ink display caught in between refreshes - Photo: Mobile Magazine

Bottom Line
The Kobo eReader is an introductory device to the world of eReading. If you compare it with other multi-functional tablet’s, its going to get killed. But looking at it from the perspective of a taste test, affordable for many, and scalable. You will understand its potential. The hardware has a nice design, the screen is a bit smaller but does not feel like an electronics device while reading it. The quilted back is smooth and supple, making it a pleasure to hold on to. Loading and accessing pages could be a bit faster, as the ability to search and bookmark would be helpful too. I really like the “standy” mode, how it shows the cover of the book you are currently reading. This uses no battery power at all, since eInk only uses juice when changing pages. But as CEO Michael Serbinis told us, we can expect more features and devices to come down the line from Kobo.

The Kobo eReader sells for $150 beginning this Saturday at Chapters and Indigo stores across Canada. Borders in the USA in a month or so. Check Kobo’s website for detailed specifications and other information.

The post Kobo’s eReader launching Saturday: An entire platform, not just a device appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

Kobo eReader first hands-on Photo: Fabrizio Pilato

This is it my fellow book worms, the newest contender on the ebook shelf. Up against Sony’s Reader, the Barnes & Noble Nook, and Amazon’s Kindle, we welcome the Kobo: with a slim stylish 6-inch E Ink display to read your ebooks on and at a price no one has yet to beat.

The first time I saw E Ink I thought it was amazing. It’s almost like looking at a photo copied piece of paper, but on an electronic device. You see, E Ink has a chillingly inanimate way about it. If an LCD were to be dead, E Ink could be an LCD’s resurrected zombie. Kind of there, but not all there. Just enough to keep it moving and always ready for something.

Kobo is starting off on the right foot.  With a major book chain behind them and a low price out the door, Kobo could make a name for themselves, and fast.

The Kobo is quite slim, it has a sturdy feel and a “quilted back.” Yah, quilted means diamonds, it’s made of that super soft smooth plastic that feels almost rubber. It has an SD expansion slot, 1GB of internal memory, and really flips through pages quite fast. You will have to wait until next month to get one, but Chapters Indigo is taking pre-orders at $150 a pop.

Here are some of our initial impressions:

• The weight is perfect, not too light or heavy, easy to hold in one hand.
• I wanted to bookmark a page, or flag it for later because of something I found interesting, but it doesn’t seem to be a feature in this version.
• When you power down the Kobo, it shows the book cover of what you are currently reading. I thought this was a nice touch and gave it the “leave on a coffee table or anywhere feel.” As you would do with a regular book.
• The “quilted back” is a really nice touch and does make it comfortable to hold. It’s a soft rubber/plastic type material that is super smooth, the quilts, or diamonds as I prefer to call them, give it a pillow-like effect.
• Software still under development. No playing with KoboBooks.com just yet.
• Browsing books by “Covers Only” mode is a bit slow and tedious.  Looks like it was setup to copy an iBooks shelf, interesting to see an E Ink display “flash” as it refreshes the screen twice before you.   I much prefer “Covers and Text” browsing, its quick and easier to tell what you are actually looking at.
• The D-Pad blue navigation button is easy to use and very responsive.  Acts a bit strange in “Covers Only” mode.
• 100 free titles are classics.  Agathie Christie, Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, T.S. Elliot, Karl Marx to name a few.

Kobo eReader first hands-on Gallery

The post Kobo’s $150 eReader: First hands-on appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

It’s just one screen with multiple modes -  a bright full color LCD, reflective E-Ink black and white quality, and transflective LCD mode. That’s pretty damn amazing if you ask me.

The Pixel Qi screen while in eReader mode has a lot of pluses -  Black and white with 64 shades of grayscale.  It’s reflective so it works in sunshine.  It uses very little battery power in black and white mode.  The full-color mode of Pixel Qi screens is like an LCD screen.  It even does what no other e-Ink display can, plays videos and full color photos.  You get everything you get with a regular LCD screen, just the lower power and higher-resolution of an e-Ink display. Pixel Qi won’t reveal yet how many nits when running at full brightness, and although it won’t win any illumination awards, it’s plenty bright. How it handled motion was a bit harder to gauge, when turned, it immediately switched to the electrophoretic reflective mode—where backlighting is replaced by ambient light reflecting off the back of the screen. In that mode, it is just as crisp as the Kindle for reading text. You can watch video in this mode too, though it’s not exactly pretty (the point being you don’t have to wait forever for the screen to refresh when you turn a page). They wouldn’t speculate on how much battery life improves when you turn off the backlight, simply stating that it saves you 2 watts of power.

They’ll be able to produce different sizes, for different form factor devices, meaning we should see them in a lot of different things over the next year or so.

Source:   Gizmodo

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