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Amazon Kindle 2 Leaked, Sony Reader To Get Touch Screen

Posted by Soulskill on from the upgrades dept.

suraj.sun writes with news that the e-book reader market is getting more competitive. The Boy Genius Report got its hands on pictures of the Kindle 2, successor to Amazon's first e-book gadget. The new version is a bit bigger, with edges that are less awkward, and it has a revamped key layout. On the same day these pictures were found, Sony announced that a new model of its Reader would be getting a touchscreen, allowing users to "turn the page by swiping their finger across the screen" and "annotate text using a touchscreen keyboard." The advances for each gadget may help them regain market share against the iPhone, which, according to Forbes, has eclipsed both in popularity as a reading device. Hopefully the competition for sales and the work being done by the OLPC Project will help to drop prices as well.

5 of 143 comments (clear)

  1. So... by DirtySouthAfrican · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Can I read run-of-the-mill letter-size PDFs on it yet?

    1. Re:So... by lysergic.acid · · Score: 2, Interesting

      hrmm... right now i'm using Bookr (i used to run PSPDF, but i think that project is dead). but these are homebrew solutions that void your warranty, which a lot of consumers might be afraid to do. i just think e-book support would be a major selling point for a lot of potential PSP buyers (it's one of my favorite uses for the PSP).

      but the HTML method is a good solution too that i'd never even thought of. i might just develop a browser-based e-book library so that i can run the application on a local web server and browse my entire e-book collection via the PSP's browser. thanks for giving me the idea. =]

      i already have a lot of text/html formatted e-books from Project Gutenberg, and i know there are several PDF->HTML converters online. i just have to find an open source implementation or perhaps use one of the web-based services somehow.

  2. Count me in as an ipod touch reader by MarcoAtWork · · Score: 4, Interesting

    after being left in the cold by Sony with their librie (closed format, no fw upgrades to read pdf or epub) I will stick with my ipod touch and stanza, the screen is a bit small and not as nice as the librie's e-ink one, but at least I can read every format without issues and the integration with feedbooks is awesome.

    --
    -- the cake is a lie
  3. Kindle Design by psydeshow · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Ugh. The Kindle is one of the best-designed gadgets I've ever owned. I hope we don't suffer through a series of crappy re-thinkings based on some misplaced notion of hipness to try to sell readers to people who don't actually read books.

    For instance, a touchscreen is an incredibly lame idea. You spend a _lot_ of time with an e-reader, ok? It takes hours and hours to read a book. Are you really going to want to read the another novel on that screen you've been dragging your finger across for the last three months? Yuck. Not a mobile phone, folks.

    I was totally skeptical about the Kindle until I actually held one. It fits great in either hand, and unlike other readers I've seen you can use it one-handed. If you use your Kindle in the supplied leatherette case you're doing it wrong!

    The Sony reader looks nicer in photos but doesn't have the same kind of balance. I'll take function over form on something like this any day.

  4. color... by jbgeek · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Hrm. I was hoping for color ePaper by now. I love the look of ePaper. I've played with the Sony reader and the Kindle and the displays look just like a piece of paper. So much more pleasant to read than an LCD or similar display! But was hoping for color by now.

    Sure, the average novel doesn't require color, but any book with illustrations, graphs, photographs or maps (as often found in Sci-Fi/Fantasy novels) would really benefit from color.

    I've followed the ePaper tech for a bit and I know color is being worked on. Once it's out, ePaper will be able to display just about anything which can be printed in a book or magazine (albeit with lower resolution).