Archive for the ‘Tablets’ Category
Qualcomm Mirasol Ereader This Fall; iPad Ebook DRM no comments
Slashgear has a nice video of a Mirasol display panel in action. Qualcom is saying that an ereader using their color display will be out in the fall, but won’t name names. Could it be the next Kindle?
iPad Ebooks Will Come With FairPlay DRM
The LA Times is reporting that publishers whose ebooks are sold on the iPad will have the option of using FairPlay DRM. Apple formerly used FairPlay to limit the number of times music tracks could be copied to different computers. FairPlay is still used on movies and television shows at the iTunes Store.
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New Photos of the Notion Ink Tablet; A Couple of Interesting Ebook Related Posts no comments
Technoholik has some more photos of the Notion Ink Adam tablet, as well as a chart with the specs. It seems that Notion Ink may plan to release a Pixel Qi version as well as a model with a regular LCD screen. As of yet no definitive prices or availability have been announced, though in an earlier interview at Technoholik a June launch in the U.S. was mentioned.
Slashgear also has a video of the Adam which shows the camera that swivels to the front for webcam use and to the back for taking photos.
The Adam is looking pretty interesting.
A Couple of Interesting Posts About Ebooks and the Publishing Industry
In Towards A World of Smaller Books Ezra Klein notes that many non-academic non-fiction paper books start out as essays and are then padded out with repetitive material to achieve a desirable length for publishing on paper. He speculates that as ebooks predominate this will change and we will see more shorter format work with less bloat. You can read the post at Crooked Timber.
Dan Agin writes an eloquent criticism of the book publishing industry and its apparent inability to adapt to digital publishing at the Huffington Post. Agin seems to think that the whole paper book industry will mostly disappear, and that paper books will some day become relatively rare and costly ( read his response to comments ). I can imagine this happening eventually, but not in our lifetimes. Then again, all it would take is a couple of generations growing up reading mostly digital books and schoolbooks.
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Camangi WebStation Price Reduction no comments
Besttabletreview is reporting that the Camangi WebStation MID has dropped
in price from $399 to $275. No doubt this is due to competition from all of the other new and upcoming iTablets.
Some of the features of the Camangi WebStation:
- 7-inch LCD screen; 800 x 480 resolution
- Micro SD card slot
- Built-in Wi-Fi and support for some 3G dongle
- Ability to reverse the text/background colors when reading ebooks – said to help keep your eyes from tiring (?)
- Device Size: 4.72 x 7.87 x .57 inches; weight 13.75 oz
- Battery: Standby up to 4 days; up to 4-5 hours when using internet and media
- GPS module
- Android based
- Type A & mini-B USB port
- Various display languages; input in English, Japanese or Simplified Chinese
The Camangi WebStation has received rather mixed reviews, but if you want to try it out for yourself you can order one from Amazon
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The “Real” iTablet Reveals Itself; e-Ink News no comments
While the press debates whether or not the iPad will make dedicated ereaders obsolete, the iPad is itself coming under increased pressure from newly announced tablets. The battlefields of the tablet wars are getting almost as crowded as those of the nearby ereader wars. Of course none of the other combatants has the Apple brand or the app store behind them, though one of them apparently does have the temerity to copy Apple’s naming conventions.
Electricpig has the goods on the iTablet by X2 Computing. This new iWannabe will run Windows 7 and come with a 250GB hard drive. It also comes with a few features that the iPad is famously missing such as a webcam and USB ports. The iTablet will come with screen sizes of 10.2 inches and 12.1 inches, and is a rather bulky 1.38 inches thick.
It is beginning to look as though any company capable of making a toaster will have either a tablet or an ereader to market by the end of the year.
e-Ink Expanding Production and Features in 2010
Meanwhile Prime View International, which makes e-Ink displays, doesn’t seem to be a believer in the prophesies of coming ereader obsolescence.
Digitimes reports that PVI is increasing its production capacity, which will enable the company to triple its output of e-ink, e-paper films and back-end modules by the end of the year.
PVI also plans to introduce flexible and color e-ink displays this year. Touchscreens and e-ink displays with a response time fast enough to support animation are also in the works.
PVI chairman Scott Liu is quoted as saying that he expects ereader shipments to possibly exceed 10 million units globally in 2010, with over 50 new vendors expected to launch ereaders this year.
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ExoPC Slate Tablet no comments
It looks as though the tablet market is on its way to getting just as crowded as that of the ereader.
Engadget has details of a newly announced tablet by the French company
ExoPC. This one will have an 8.9-inch multitouch screen. Unlike the iPad, the ExoPC Slate will support multi-tasking and Adobe Flash. Some of the other features:
- Processor: Intel Atom N270 1.6GHz
- Screen resolution: 1024 x 600
- Storage: 32 GB SSD drive; SD/MMC card reader
- Memory: 2 GB DDR2
- Connectivity: Wi-Fi; Bluetooth and 10/100 LAN
- 1.3 Megapixel webcam
- 3 USB ports
- Battery life is only four hours, but the battery is removable, so presumably you can buy spares.
The ExoPC will run Windows 7 Pro. The tablet is 9.8 x 6.6 inches is a little over 3/4 inches thick and will weigh about 1 3/4 pounds. The ExoPC will be available in March at a price of $599.
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The Apple iPad 2 comments
The wait is finally over; Steve Jobs presented the iPad today, and it is a pretty impressive giant iPod Touch.
Just to recap the features, which you have probably already seen:
- 9.7 – inch backlit LED multitouch display with a fingerprint – resistant coating; 1024 x 768 resolution
- 16GB, 32GB or 64GB flash drive
- Lots of formats supported, including MS Word, PDF, MS PowerPoint, EPUB
- Language, keyboard and dictionary support for European languages as well as Japanese and Simplified Chinese
- Video playback up to 720p
- Battery life of up to 10 hours playing video, using Wi-Fi, etc. Up to one month standby
- Wi-Fi (802.11 a/b/g/n), Bluetooth 2.1; optional 3G
The most surprising thing for me is the pricing: $499, $599 and $699 depending on the size of the flash drive. 3G will cost an additional $130 plus a monthly data plan. I was expecting pricing starting at around $700. Unfortunately (for me anyway), Apple has decided to go with AT&T again for the 3G, which would be unacceptable for me. If I buy an iPad I guess I will have to just get the base model with Wi-Fi.
Some things that the iPad doesn’t seem to have (at least not yet):
- No Flash support for internet browsing
- No Multitasking
- No expandable memory
- No non-backlit screen for ereading
So is the iPad going to make the dedicated ereader extinct? Am I going to rename my favorite gadget the ereaderosaurus and make plans to visit it at the museum? I think not.
I think that the iPad will probably appeal mostly to fans of multifunction devices and, as far as ereading goes, to casual readers. It will be great for reading magazines. Textbooks and other graphics–rich material should also be well suited to the iPad, at least until a color Kindle comes along. Schools will not be embracing the iPad or any other ereading device that does not include accessibility features, but students who choose to do so should still be able to utilize a digital version of their textbook on the iPad rather than the paper version. The iPad does have a VoiceOver screen reader and full screen zoom features, but not sure if this will be enough to satisfy the NFB.
For serious readers who want an ereader to read a lot of books that are mostly text a dedicated ereader will still be best. The iPad’s LCD screen does not compare to e-ink or other non-backlit ereader screens for reading. There are also reports that Apple is letting publishers set the prices of their ebooks, so they will likely be more expensive than versions from the Kindle store. It’s not clear yet if Kindle iPhone apps will be okay on the iPad.
Obviously larger format ereaders will feel more competition from the iPad than the smaller ereaders with 5 or 6-inch screens. The one ereader that I see taking the biggest hit form the iPad is the Plastic Logic Que. At an announced price of $650 and $800 the Que just doesn’t seem to be a viable business plan after today. I hope I’m wrong, of course, we’ll have to wait and see. I can’t imagine that there are many smiling faces at the Plastic Logic compound today.
Multifunction devices such as the Entourage eDGe and even the Spring Design Alex will also probably stand to loose sales to the iPad. Prices will have to come down on these devices as well as the larger format ereaders such as the Kindle DX for them to stay competitive for some shoppers. Netbooks are probably also going to be under pressure from the iPad although most of these are $100 -$200 less expensive.
It also remains to be seen what Amazon has up its sleeves. If we can get a non-backlit color Kindle later in the year with something like a Mirasol or LiquaVista display that would certainly be much better than the iPad for my ebooks.
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CES 2010 no comments
I was able to spend about a day at CES this year. If you are a gadget boy/girl
then going to CES is kind of like being a kid again in a mega toy store with a large candy department on the side. If ereaders are one of your most favorite gadgets, then being at this year’s CES was kind of like being Willy Wonka and getting a ticket to a chocolate factory.
One problem though, is that many of the gadgets one sees and gets to hopefully try out are prototypes and are not always fully functional as well as being subject to change (or cancellation). In some cases this seemed to be very true for ereaders this year. Many of the ereader demos only had a few public domain titles loaded, and a few had dead batteries from all of the handling.
I managed to break my camera while at CES (Spirit Guide: fortunately grasshopper could fix it when he was back home & had access to his mini tools), so some of the pics are taken with my cell phone – sorry!
Some of the booth designs are pretty amazing. The cell phone picture at the top, which is of Samsung’s walls of flat panel screens does not do it justice.
The picture at the left is of a large touch screen at Intel’s booth with 500 slowly spinning cubes, each of which represents a live website. If you touch one of the cubes a small detail window opens for a few seconds. All powered by a thumbnail-sized Intel chip. Have we left Kansas yet Toto?
eReaders at CES 2010
Plastic Logic Que
Plastic Logic’s Que was probably one of the most eagerly anticipated ereaders
at this year’s CES.
The display is quite good; newspapers look good on the Que. As you probably know by now, the Que display utilizes plastic rather than glass to create a shatterproof screen. Overall, the Que felt a bit too plastic to me. The bezel is a shiny acrylic or similar material, and I expect it to be very scratch prone. I think Plastic Logic would have done better to use a matte material.
The announced price of the Que ereader is somewhat stratospheric; $649 for a 4GB model with WiFi, and $799 for an 8GB model with both WiFi and 3G. At these prices it will probably be in pretty direct competition with the Apple iSlate.
Notion Ink Adam
Notion Ink’s Adam tablet is Android powered and is the first announced device to use Pixel Qi display technology. I really wanted to have a look at this, but the closest I could get was a non-powered demo in a glass case at the Nvidia booth. 
According to an Nvidia booth-boy, the only working unit at CES was in the hands of Notion Ink Director Rohan Shravan, who was booked up giving private demonstrations with it. Liliputing.com was the happy recipient of one of these sessions and you can see their video and reviews.
Pixel Qi looks very promising. Engadget said in a post yesterday that they have been told that a manufacturer that “everyone is familiar with” will be announcing a Pixel Qi equipped device in 2010. Hmmm…wonder if the manufacturer alluded to has a name starting with the first letter of the alphabet and is named after a fruit or a river?
Irex
Also at the Nvidia booth was an unpowered (or maybe just the batteries were dead) Irex DR800SG ereader. I couldn’t do much with it as it had no power, but I still think that the design has promise; an 8-inch screen in a package that is the same overall size as a Kindle with 6-inch screen.
Still no idea when this will be released. There were some rumors of a mid-January release, but Irex seems to have a history of setting release dates that don’t materialize. There is still nothing on Best Buy’s website about the DR800SG.
Liquavista
Liquavista is one of the color display technologies that should be making its way into
future ereaders. Liquavista is based on existing LCD manufacturing infrastructure. This display tech is capable of displaying color video while using very low power. It looks as though it won’t be integrated into an actual ereader that you can buy until possibly the end of 2010 or more likely early next year. Qualcomm has said that its Mirasol color display technology is on track to enter production in the fall of 2010, so it may be able to beat Liquavista to market by a few months, but of course we will have to wait and see.
The colors and video playback in the Liquavista reference designs displayed at CES were quite impressive. The display does look very paper-like.
iRiver Story
The Story ereader by iRiver has been selling in Asia and Europe, and is supposed to make it to the US this month. 
iRiver is a Korean company best known for its portable music and video players. The Story is iRiver’s first foray into ereaders.
The Story has a chiclet style keyboard similar to the Kindle ereader. The display is a 6-inch e-ink screen. There is 2GB of internal memory plus an SD card slot. There should be an MS Office doc viewer as well as some sort of comics viewer. Adobe Digital Editions as well as non-DRM’ed epub should be among the supported file formats.
The Story ereader seemed to be solidly built, but other than the features noted above, there wasn’t anything that seemed to really differentiate it from the other ereaders out there. Refresh times and navigation seemed to be pretty much on par with other current ereaders. The price and availability has not been announced yet, but the Story was selling for about $290 in Korea. I don’t see this ereader being really competitive unless it is priced less than the Kindle or nook.
Dual-Screen “eReaders”
Both MSI and Asus have their dual LCD screened ereader concepts on display at CES, but these really seem like netbooks with two screens rather than ereaders. Perhaps if the screens were to use Pixel Qi they would be more viable as ereaders. As laptop/netbooks, however, both could be quite good. The two screens can work separately or together as one larger screen, or one screen can serve up a virtual keyboard.
enTourage eDGe
After Plastic Logic’s booth the enTourage Systems booth was probably the busiest ereader show at CES.
The Kindle Chronicles has a good CES interview and video of the eDGe in action.
My take is that while the eDGe with all of its study tools and bells and whistles would be good for students and their etextbooks or perhaps as a netbook replacement, it is obviously overkill for someone looking for just an ereader. It is rather bulky for reading in your bed or armchair. Also it appears that the eDGe ereader will be tied to enTourage’s ebook store for DRM’ed ebooks. Currently enTourage claims to have 200,000 ebooks in addition to the usual Google public domain suspects.
At a price of almost $500 the eDGe is more expensive than most netbooks as well. Still, it is the most interesting multipurpose “ereader” that I’ve seen yet. A lot of thought obviously went into its development, and the eDGe is capable of doing just about anything you would ask of it.
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Haleron Technologies iLet Tablet no comments
Haleron Technologies (via Liliputing.com) has announced another tablet, or rather a family of three tablets. The 10-inch models should hit the market next month, with the 7-inch iLet coming in March.
- iLet 7: 7-inch touchscreen with WiFi, Bluetooth, 3G; starts at $188
- iLet 10: 10-inch multi-touch screen, 1024 x 600 resolution; base price $419, optional upgrades available
- iLet Extreme: Loaded 10-inch version; $699
The 10-inch iLet tablets come with Windows 7, but Linux and Android are 
available options. The tablets come with 160GB or optional larger hard drives. A 1.3M pixels camera, 4in1 card reader and network card are also included, as are an external monitor port, microphone and earphone jacks, and 2 USB ports.
An Intel N450 processor clocked at 1.66 GHz powers the iLet 10.
Connectivity is covered with 3G, unlocked quad band cellular, WiFi and Bluetooth.
There are quite a few bells and whistles on the iLet, especially the Extreme. One drawback is the 3 cell battery is only rated for 5.5 hours.
The iLet tablets will be joining an increasingly large array of tablet computers in 2010, with of course the Apple iSlate expected to be the top dog. The best tablets for use as ereaders will no doubt be those that offer some sort of reflective display, such as Notion Ink’s tablet which will implement a Pixel Qi display and will also debut at CES.
According to the NY Times, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer will present an H.P. tablet (is this the Microsoft Courier?) at his CES keynote address tomorrow. This tablet is expected to feature multi-touch and ereader functions, and could turn out to be the biggest competitor to the Apple iSlate.
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Apple iSlate to Ship in March? Cool-er eReaders to get More Content, New Models Coming no comments
The Wall Street Journal (subscription required) is reporting that Apple’s (iSlate?) Tablet will be announced later this month but won’t be shipping until March. This according to “people briefed by the company”. The article also says that Apple has been working on two different finish materials for the tablet.
Cool-er eReader Getting More Content
Interead, which makes the Cool-er ereaders, announced yesterday that with their partnership with OverDrive they now have more than 2 million titles available. This number also includes public domain books from Google. Through NewspapersDirect there are also more than 1,400 newspapers and magazines available for the Cool-er ereaders.
Ebooks at the Cooler ebook store are 20% off of the list price, which makes them more expensive than the Kindle Store or Barnes & Noble. For example, The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown is $23.96 at Coolerebooks.com vs $9.60 for the Kindle ereader version or from B&N’s ebook store. Interead does say that ebooks purchased from Coolerebooks.com can be shared with up to five other readers.
In a separate press release Interead also announced a new line of ereaders that will be presented at CES.
- The Cool-er Compact will have a 6-inch screen and an overall size of 6.7 x 4.6 x .41 inches and will be available Spring 2010.
- The Cool-er Connect ereader will add WiFi and a touch screen, and will also be available in the Spring.
- The third new ereader, the Cool-er 3G will add 3G connectivity (via AT&T?) and will be available in mid-2010.
It seems that the 3G enabled ereader will have at least some web browsing ability as well.
In case the current jelly bean colors are not enough for you, Cool-er ereaders will also be available in a couple of new flavors – Midnight Blue and Orange Crush.
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Notion Ink Tablet; HTC Tablet Rumors; Onyx Boox 60 1 comment
The first announced device to use a Pixel Qi display will debut at CES 2010.
Notion Ink’s new tablet will be based on the Nvidia Tegra T20 chipset and will run Android.
Some of the features include WiFi, Bluetooth and UMTS/HSDPA connectivity, 1080P HD video playback, camera, GPS and a digital compass. Notion Ink’s new tablet will sport a 10.1-inch touchscreen and weigh 1.7 lbs.
I’m going to be able to spend a couple of days at CES, and this is definitely one of the new devices that I’ll want to check out.
Pixel Qi displays could turn tablet devices such as this one into very viable larger format ereaders. Is it possible that the much rumored about Apple iSlate or whatever it turns out to be called will use Pixel Qi? 9to5Mac.com has some interesting speculation on an Apple-Pixel Qi connection.
Google/HTC Tablet Rumors
Smarthouse.com reports that HTC and Google have been working on another tablet which they will be showing behind closed doors at CES to select HTC customers.
Google’s Google Editions ebook store should launch in the first half of 2010, and no doubt Google would love for you to buy a device such as this one to access it on.
Onyx Boox 60
The Onyx Boox 60 ereader will be distributed in the US by Dulin’s Books.
The Boox features a 6-inch Vizplex e-Ink display with 16 grayscales and uses Wacom touchscreen technology which needs a stylus to use but avoids the scary glary capacitive touchscreen that Sony, for example uses. Using the stylus you can make annotations and even freehand drawings and sketches.
Other features include WiFi and 3G connectivity, Webkit browser, search and dictionary functions, text to speech support, changeable fonts and font sizes, PDF zoom in/out. Folders are also supported.
Supported formats include Adobe Digital Editions as well as PDF, TXT, HTML, MOBIPOCKET, EPUB, CHM, PDB, JPG, PNG, GIF, BMP, TIFF, MP3 and WAV.
This looks like a pretty good ereader with lots of features, but the price is $349, which is rather steep when compared to the nook or Kindle. The Wacom touchscreen and the ability to zoom in and out on PDF docs and annotate them looks great, but I think that a 6-inch screen will be too small for many of the users who really need these particular features.
