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Amazon and Barnes & Noble Jostle Over Battery Life Figures for Nook, Kindle
destinyland writes "Amazon just doubled the reported battery life for their Kindle digital readers — but they did it by cutting the estimated daily usage in half. Monday Amazon's competitor Barnes and Noble released a new touch-screen version of their Nook reader, and C|Net notes that apparently Amazon 'took issue with how its competitor was calculating and presenting its battery life numbers.' When Barnes and Noble claimed that the Nook's charge lasted twice as long based on a half hour a day of usage, Amazon simply recalculated the Kindle's battery life using the same formula. By Wednesday, Barnes and Noble was insisting that the Nook's charge still lasted twice as long as the Kindle's. 'If that's true, then Barnes and Noble mangled the launch of their touch-screen Nook,' reports one Kindle blog, 'by botching their description of one of its main selling points.'"
How about stating the battery life in actual hours of continuous use instead of estimated days based on estimated usage? Is that really so hard?
I own the original Nook, and get in at least an hour, usually two or more, spread throughout the day. Do people buying dedicated e-readers (as opposed to color tablets) really only get in a half hour every day? I'd thought the market was mostly for readers like me.
Then again Amazon is no saint here either, with their "50% higher contrast Kindle 3!" which in reality only had 6% darker (to the eye) blacks.
Just say "it allows for 20000 page turns"
That way it's not a relative time, but a real number people can evaluate.
It's like saying my Mac can stay on for 30 days and not mentioning the fact that it's on standby.
Because Amazon weren't the pioneers of hassle free reading (sarcasm)
Also, the kindle is available everywhere. Literally free 3g everywhere in the world.
I dropped my kindle once and Amazon replaced it, no questions asked.
Not saying the nook is bad, but the Kindle and Amazons' customer service just bought them a lifetime customer
Whoever came up with this comparison chart will be first up against a wall when the revolution comes:
https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/G/01/kindle/shasta/photos/image-battery-life.gif
I brought my Kindle 3 to China. It's a long flight, so I read a lot in the airplane. A couple of days I read only 30 minutes, and for three days, I stayed in the hostel because I got sick of something I ate. So in those three days, I read up to 6 hours per day. All in all, the holiday lasted 12 days and I had about 25% charge left at the end of the holiday.
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You have at least two or three variables, depending:
1) Is your wireless/3G on? That drains more quickly than just reading does.
2) How many page-flips?
3) Do you have the fancy cover with the pop-out LED light that draws from the Kindle battery, and how much do you use it?
4) How much time spend actually reading, vs. in standby? Not a whole lot of power savings in standby, but the CPU's at least in deeper sleep.
With the light and the wireless on, I can drain a battery in several hours' continuous usage, or (more likely) two to three days on my normal schedule. I don't normally leave the wireless on, though. I understand Amazon claimed a month of usage without wireless or light, but that obviously depends on how many books you'll read in a month.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
This is an Android-based device for $139. It has an e-Ink display and a touch screen. I'm buying one the day after it's rooted.
Does anyone know enough about the touch-screen method this uses to tell me whether it can present two datapoints at a time? (Can the hardware be used to do multi-touch?)
It doesn't make sense to spec the battery life on continuous use because no one does that. 30 minutes per day is far more accurate than continuous use.
We spec light bulbs that way even though the frequency they are turned on and off has a huge affect on their lifespan. Tires are measured in total miles. One tire manufacture doesn't claim to last twice as long and then put in the fine print that it assumes you will only stop and accelerate some number of times that makes their tires suddenly last longer.
Spec continuous use and then let usage patterns derive from that. Don't start at usage patterns or you wind up in the marketing mess we're talking about.
I only have a Kindle, but I have yet to come close to its battery limits. It seems to have a pretty good battery/power draw combination. I imagine the Nook is similar.
This is, as far as I can tell, just a stupid pissing contest.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
Umm then why bother even getting a reader?
Some people have busy lives. Some people are into nonfiction that's difficult to digest.
I plan to buy a reader when the right device comes along. The technical stuff that I like to read is best consumed in small chunks. Highly technical stuff can be very taxing. It's a whole different ballgame than fiction.
"Liechtenstein is the world's largest producer of sausage casings, potassium storage units, and false teeth."
My books don't consume electricity. The oldest ones I have are physical prints which are more than 50 years old. Still working and looking splendit ... without electricity. I know, I might be a troll here .... but I never understood the reason for e-books....
Less physical clutter.
Less cost to move all those books to a new place.
The ability to resize the text on the fly to make it easier to read. This is probably the most desirable feature for me.
Bring a dozen books on a trip, without having to find room for all of them in my luggage.
For cover-to-cover reading (not random access, think fiction / novels) and not books with a lot of figures or that require color to explain things, it's very nice to read on. The Sony readers were very good at getting out of the way and letting you focus on the content.
I still prefer physical hard copy for reference works.
Wolde you bothe eate your cake, and have your cake?