Archive for the ‘dell mini 5’ tag
eReader & Tablet News – 8/14/2010 no comments
Lots of things happening this week, I’ll recap here what I could not cover elsewhere.
The latest generation Kindle 3 is now shipping on September 10. The Kindle 3 continues to sell well and the ship date for new orders was pushed back two days. E Ink Holdings has said that it is increasing the production of EPDs to keep up with the demand.
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Kobo is running another contest. The prize in this one is a free ebook every month for one year. As is usual with Kobo’s contests, you are automatically entered when you buy a book. This contest is running from August 11 to August 17, 2010. You can read all of the fine print at Kobo.com.
In other Kobo news, guests at Fairmont Gold will have the use of a Kobo ereader during their stay. The eReader will come preloaded with a variety of Random House ebooks, and guests will also be given a $2 off coupon good for select Random House ebooks from Kobo.
This seems like a good idea, as it will no doubt get ereaders into the hands of some who would otherwise not have a chance to try one. It is easy to impress a traveler with the utility of an ereader – it is far easier to carry a load of books on an ebook reader than in your suitcase. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if we see similar promotions at other hotels soon; also involving NOOKs and Kindles if Amazon and B&N get into the act.
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It’s a tablet. No, it’s a smartphone . . . No, it’s the Dell Streak!
Dell started taking orders for its Streak tablet/phone yesterday
, Friday the 13th (pre-sale registrants were able to order on the 12th, a day earlier). The Streak is $299.99 with a 2-year AT&T contract, or $549.99 without.
In addition to its other features, the Streak has a Gorilla glass screen, which is pretty much unbreakable. If we cannot get flexible screens for our ereaders I would certainly settle for this – I would even pay more for the assurance that my ereader’s screen was much more damage-resistant than current models.
Maximum PC has a pretty thorough review of the Dell Streak.
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According to Gartner (via Electronics Weekly), Android is the most popular smartphone OS in the US, and is in third place internationally behind RIM and Symbian.
Meanwhile, Reuters reports that Oracle has filed suit against Google, alleging that the Android OS infringes on its Java related copyrights and patents. Oracle acquired Java when it purchased Sun Microsystems in January of this year.
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Smashwords and and the Diesel eBook Store have signed a distribution agreement. Smashwords will distribute its Premium Catalog of over 11,000 ebooks through the Diesel beginning on August 25, 2010. Smashwords will also power the new Diesel Publishing Portal which caters to indie authors and publishers with fewer than 100 published titles.
Authors and publishers who utilize Smashwords to supply eBooks to the Diesel eBook Store will earn royalties of 60% of the retail price as set by the Smashwords author or publisher.
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Dell Streak Incoming no comments
A couple of months ago some leaked Dell flyers surfaced of what Dell is now calling the Streak. This is an Android-based tablet and one of the features listed on the flyers was a Kindle reading app. This was seen as predicting a Kindle for Android app, and indeed a few days ago Amazon announced that such an app is forthcoming.
Now Dell has announced that the 5-inch Streak tablet will debut in Britain in early June, 2010 and in the United States a month or two later. The Streak, which is also a cell phone, will be available through mobile carrier O2 and Carphone Warehouse in Britain. Dell’s UK website will also have the Streak later this month. So far there does not seem to be any pricing information.
Some of the features of the Dell Streak:
- Rear-facing 5 megapixel camera plus a second forward-facing camera for video conferencing
- MicroSD memory card slot (up to 32GB)
- 5-inch multitouch screen; 800 x 480 resolution
- Wi-Fi, 3G & Bluetooth
- GPS
- Multitasking
- 1 GB Snapdragon processor
- Update to Android 2.2 and Flash 10.1 later in the year
- User-replaceable battery
Engadget reports that initially the Streak will only be available in black, but more colors will be available later. Also see the Direct2Dell blog for more info. The Streak is the first of a series of tablet devices – Dell is working on larger format tablets as well.
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Kindle App For Android Coming? 1 comment
Engadget has posted some leaked internal Dell flyers showing the Android-based Dell Mini 5 and listing some of its features:
- Kindle “book reader” applications
- Amazon MP3
- Amazon Video Streams
- Amazon Store
This could mean that Kindle for Android is coming soon. Amazon has not announced anything, but with the number of Android-based devices coming to market it seems obvious that Amazon will want to make an Android reading app to go along with Kindle for PC, Kindle for Blackberry and the soon to come Kindle for Mac.
There is a Kindle blurb on the Dell flyer that claims over 300,000 books available in the Kindle store. That would have been correct about 4-5 months ago if memory serves; now there are over 420,000 books. So I’m guessing that the leaked docs are probably from about that time?
(Via jkOnTheRun)
