Hasta La Gadget!

Barnes & Noble’s new Nook Simple Touch has a touchscreen and promises better battery life. Photo: Lena Groeger/Wired.com.

Barnes & Noble on Tuesday unveiled a simplified touchscreen e-reader: the Simple Touch Reader. Designed for a “pure and simple” reading experience without buttons, keyboards or complexity, the new compact Nook will be available around June 10th in stores or online.

It’s got a 6-inch Pearl E Ink display and weighs in at just under 7.5 ounces, 35% lighter than the original Nook. It’s selling for $140, the same price as the Kindle 3, but not as cheap at the $114 Kindle with ads.

The first-generation Nook is available for a discount price of $120 (for WiFi only) and $170 (for WiFi/3G) until supplies run out.

CEO William Lynch announced at a New York press event that the Simple Touch would be the “easiest to use, most portable e-book reader ever.” He outlined several advantages to the new Nook over its Amazon rival.

The most impressive feature for avid readers is the device’s super long battery life: a whole two months at half an hour a day, or twice as long as the Kindle.

There is also 80% less flashing, or that annoying “ghosting” effect between pages, Lynch claimed.

As with previous models, readers will be able to browse entire e-books in the Barnes & Noble physical stores over Wi-Fi, and share recommendations with friends via Facebook and Twitter.

The display offers 50% more contrast than the first edition Nook, and has a “soft touch,” contoured back, presumably to make it comfier to hold. The Android-based device has 2 GB of memory (with an expandable memory slot that could boost it to 32GB).

While the touchscreen turns the new e-reader into more of a tablet than its predecessor, the new Nook does not offer apps or 3G. Those additions would interrupt the “straightforward reading experience,” said Lynch. The Simple Touch Reader will cater to a particular segment of the population: people who don’t salivate over newest generation apps and just want the basics, please.

For those who do itch for a little more, the company’s popular Nook Color recently got a software update, which includes new apps, support for Flash and built-in email. As it’s meant to be the “reader’s tablet for all forms of digital content and rich web browsing,” the Nook Color is second only to the iPad in tablet sales. More than a million apps have been downloaded since they became available in April.

With these two devices, the world’s largest brick-and-mortar bookseller is in a good position to vie with Apple and Amazon for the tablet and e-reading market. Barnes & Noble has already had surprising success since it launched its first Nook in 2009, and now accounts for 25 percent of the digital book market. No doubt this caught the eye of media billionaire John Malone of Liberty Media, who just offered $1billion for a 70% stake in the company.

The e-book market is growing rapidly: Amazon recently announced it is now selling more e-books than print books. Now it’s just a race for the best price.

E-reader manufacturers are doing their darnedest to get their devices to behave more like the old fashioned books we’ve all since abandoned, but we won’t be happy until we can roll one up and stuff it in our back pockets, paperback-style. Sony’s working hard to make that dream a reality — the company showed off some new bendable display technology behind closed doors at last week’s SID conference in LA, including a color unit and the extremely flexible black and white e-paper display seen above, which can be bent to a 5mm curvature radius. The 13.3-inch sheet has a 1,600 x 1,200 (150ppi) resolution and is powered by organic TFTs. Sony showed off and bent the thing at the show, reportedly to the cheers of the crowd in attendance. Clearly they’re all as excited as we are to make some really expensive e-paper airplanes. For more shots of the bending process, consult the source link below.

Sony shows off, folds up super flexible organic TFT display originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 23 May 2011 22:49:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink E-Ink-Info  |  Tech-On  | Email this | Comments

Bookeen has already taunted us with an E Ink Pearl display hacked to playback clips of chubby bunnies without so much as a hiccup, now it’s showing off web browsing and scrolling on the same screen. It’s a little stuttery, as you can see in the video below, but considering this is the same tech found in the Kindle it’s quite impressive. The trick is accomplished using custom software and off the shelf hardware — in other words, nothing terribly fancy. So, while we sit here letting out exasperated sighs with every digital page turn, we’ll just keep hoping Bookeen gets this in something we can buy soon.

Continue reading Bookeen does real time web browsing and scrolling on standard E Ink screen (video)

Bookeen does real time web browsing and scrolling on standard E Ink screen (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 21 May 2011 02:28:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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E Ink’s 300ppi 9.7-inch panel — touting “laser print quality” and a ridiculous 2400 x 1650 screen resolution — was just the tip of the e-paper iceberg here at SID 2011. The aforesaid display isn’t shipping in any commercial products just yet, but given that OEMs are already accepting ’em, we were told to expect ultra-fine print devices in the not-too-distant future. The screen, which was jointly developed by Epson, truly did look astonishing up close, forcing us to get awkwardly close to see the pixels behind the pictures. Outside of that guy, though, the outfit’s booth was splattered with concepts — everything from an E Ink-infused snowboard (shown above) to a rugged radio. There was even a prototype sheet music reader (dreamed up by Lenart Studios) that looked downright outstanding, not to mention a thermostat that would have any Home Depot junkie swooning. Have a gander at the galleries below, and peek past the break for a brief video tour. Oh, and Burton — you should seriously get on this.

Continue reading E Ink shows concepts galore at SID 2011: snowboards, radios, thermostats, oh my!

E Ink shows concepts galore at SID 2011: snowboards, radios, thermostats, oh my! originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 19 May 2011 11:25:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s pretty obvious that this year’s SID Display Week is shaping up to be a stage for the 300ppi extravaganza — Samsung and LG were first to announce their latest high pixel density LCDs, and then Toshiba chimed in with its 367ppi LCD for cellphones. Fortunately, fans of ePaper will also have something to look forward to here, as E Ink Holdings and Epson have just announced the co-development of a 300ppi ePaper display. To be exact, E Ink will be in charge of producing the sharp-looking 9.68-inch 2,400 x 1,650 display panel, whereas Epson will take care of the high-speed display controller platform to go with E Ink’s part. No availability has been announced just yet, but stay tuned for our eyes-on impression at the show.

Continue reading E Ink and Epson to co-develop 9.7-inch high-res 300ppi electronic paper display

E Ink and Epson to co-develop 9.7-inch high-res 300ppi electronic paper display originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 17 May 2011 01:47:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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