Hasta La Gadget!

When chipmaker Marvell told us its technology would power $99 smartphones, we took the company at its word. We weren’t expecting a sub-$100, 10-inch tablet PC, however — and we definitely weren’t expecting Marvell itself to build it. Marketed at students looking to lighten their textbook load, the Marvell Moby will be an “always-on, high performance multimedia tablet” capable of full Flash support and 1080p HD playback — thanks to those nifty Armada 600 series processors — and supporting WiFi, Bluetooth, FM radio, GPS and both Android and Windows Mobile platforms for maximum flexibility. No release date has yet been announced; like the OLPC, Marvell will introduce the Moby in pilot programs at participating at-risk schools. While it’s far too early to say if the Moby will be the universal educational e-reader Marvell hopes (that depends on software), it’s certainly an intriguing device for the price, and we’ll admit we’re a touch jealous of those kids who’ll first get to try one.

Marvell pitches $99 Moby Tablet as textbook alternative originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 19 Mar 2010 02:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Well it’s about time, Spring Design! After missing its February ship date, the company is finally ready for you to whip out the plastic and pre-order its Alex — that dual-screen, Android-based ereader we liked so much at CES. While you can shell out the $399 today, you’ll still have to wait until mid-April for the mailman to drop off the package. We’d like to say the wait stops there, but we’ve also learned that early buyers won’t have access to the promised Borders eBook store until June. When we chatted with Spring Design CEO Priscilla Lu last week she confirmed that Borders will officially launch its store in the “June time frame,” which will be around the very same time that the 3G version of the Alex will be ready to hit the market — at least there’s access to Google Books and an micro-SD card slot for sideloading in the meantime. With so much coming down the pike it may be worth waiting a bit more time for this one, but our own Alex arrived just last night so no matter what it’d behoove you to wait a few days for our review before you hit the source link to pre-order.

Update: Well, this is odd. Even though this news hit the wires today, the shop page on Spring Design’s website is definitely non-functional right now. Instead, you’ll see a message to check back soon. We’ll keep doing just that until we see signs of life… or hear otherwise.

Update 2: And we’re back…the pre-order page is finally up!

Spring Design Alex finally up for pre-order, Borders eBook store launching in June originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 16 Mar 2010 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If you think the coming wave of tablets is about to make e-book readers obsolete, guess again.

Although dozens of tablets are scheduled to hit the market this year — from companies like Apple, HP and Dell, as well as upstarts like JooJoo — executives in the e-reader industry aren’t particularly worried.

Instead, they say, tablets and E Ink-based reading devices are likely to co-exist, targeting different groups of consumers based on their purchasing power, the extent of interactivity they need and their reading patterns.

“In the short term, every company is likely to have two lines of products,” says Robert Brunner, founder of Ammunition, a design firm that worked with Barnes & Noble to design the Nook e-reader. “If you think of a paperback-like reader, E Ink does a fantastic job. But color will definitely happen and it is likely to be LCD or OLED. It seems logical.”

Think of this strategy as something similar to the one employed by the print publishing industry. There are more expensive, better-designed hardcovers for consumers who value presentation — while the same books are often available in cheaper, but still functional, paperback editions.

In the digital world, that’s likely to translate into two sets of products: Full-featured tablets with color displays and lots of features that cost $400 or more, and inexpensive black-and-white E Ink-powered e-readers that will be available for $150 or less.

The launch of Amazon’s Kindle in 2007 kickstarted the market for electronic book readers. Last year, an estimated 5 million e-readers were sold and sales are expected to double this year. Meanwhile, companies like Apple and HP are promoting their tablets as devices that can be used to read digital books — although, as mini computers, these tablets can also do a lot more. Apple has already planned an iTunes-like iPad book store, called iBooks, that will compete with Amazon in selling electronic books.

The resurgence of tablets has given rise to chatter that tablets could mean the end of the road for e-readers. After all, who would want to buy a black-and-white Kindle that is basically good only for reading, when for only slightly more money, they could get a slick iPad that also does e-mail, shows movies, displays your photos and lets you edit documents?

That line of reasoning is moot, say executives in the e-reader industry.

“If reading is your primary entertainment activity, you are more likely to buy an e-reader,” says Glen Burchers, director of marketing for Freescale. “So this is a person who will pick up a book when they have the spare time instead of turning on the TV or opening up the computer.” Freescale’s processors power nearly 90 percent of the e-readers available currently.

Recent research commissioned by Freescale showed an e-reader buyer, on average, is 43 years old, earns $72,000 and buys two e-books a month.

Those who say they’re interested in buying a tablet tend to be much younger, Freescale’s research showed. Tablets will be more attractive to people who want to use them for reading but also for keeping up with their Facebook pages and Twitter feeds.

An e-book designed for tablets could have interactive elements, color photos and video embeds, making it perfect for textbooks or cookbooks. Narrative non-fiction or fiction books need that kind of multimedia enhancement less, so they are more likely to be targeted at black-and-white e-readers, says Brunner.

E Ink screens aren’t particularly good at anything other than books, leaving newspapers and magazines out in the cold. That’s where tablets could step in, says James McQuivey, an analyst with Forrester Research. Indeed, many magazines — including Wired — have already announced plans to develop electronic magazines that will work on tablets. But it will be a battle that could take a toll on e-paper based displays, he says.

“For people who read more of those media than they do books, tablets will be an ideal device and can easily take some wind out of E Ink sales, once we get beyond the fourth of the population that really enjoys reading books,” says McQuivey.

Still, tablets won’t immediately supplant lower-priced electronic paper-based e-readers, he notes.

“The first thing you need to consider is whether tablets will actually be as good for book reading as the E Ink readers are,” says McQuivey. “Having a two-week battery life and a device that’s comfortable to stare at for hours at a stretch without strain (as with e-paper based e-readers) is hard to beat.”

Another major factor is price. Currently, most e-readers cost about $260, and the cheapest e-reader currently available is a $200 Sony Reader. Driving the price down could help keep the category alive, especially if tablets cost $500 or more, as the iPad will.

Earlier this month, Freescale announced a new processor designed exclusively for e-readers that could bring down their cost to $150 and lower.

According to Freescale’s estimates, a $50 reduction in price potentially doubles the pool of consumers who say they will buy an e-reader.

“At this stage of the market, price is a very important factor for growth,” Freescale’s Burcher says.

So what’s a company like Amazon likely to do next? Create a color Kindle or a color tablet for e-reading?

Brunner says a tablet that puts e-reading at the center is a more likely response to the iPad. “They don’t have a choice if they want to offer a richer, more in-depth experience,” he says.

At least in the next two years, electronic paper displays are unlikely to offer color and video on par with LCD screens. E Ink’s color screens are not expected to be widely available until next year and alternative low power technologies, such as Qualcomm’s Mirasol, aren’t optimal for the large screens (greater than 6 inches) that are the hallmark of tablets. And even when these color, low-power display technologies become widespread, they will still lack the speed and contrast people are used to with LCDs.

Instead, say some industry executives, it is likely that Amazon could design a tablet with an LCD screen that puts digital books at the center of its user interface.

“Tablets currently focus on the web-surfing experience,” says Sri Peruvemba, vice-president of sales and marketing for E Ink. “But there’s room for a tablet that’s primarily targeted at students.”

Even if the e-readers market splits into two, it shouldn’t make a difference to publishers or readers, says Trip Adler, CEO of Scribd, a document-sharing social network. Companies like Scribd and Lulu support multiple devices including PC, smartphones and e-readers and a wide variety of formats such as ePub and PDF.

“People can upload a file in any format and we can convert it to all other formats,” says Scribd’s Adler. “We make the process simple.”

See Also:

• Plastic Logic Aims New Que E-Reader at Business Users
• Dual-Screen Device Combines E-Reader, Netbook
• Nook E-Reader Gets Hacked to Run Apps, Browser
• 5 Things That Will Make E-Readers Better in 2010
• Singularity Proponent Ray Kurzweil Reinvents the Book, Again …

Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

Continue reading ASUS DR-900 e-reader hands-on

ASUS DR-900 e-reader hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 02 Mar 2010 16:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple has put the pressure on e-book readers with its forthcoming iPad tablet. But Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Sony aren’t taking it lying down. Color, touchscreens and improved black-and-white displays are some of the innovations that consumers can expect to see in electronic-reading gadgets this year.

“E-readers today are where the pre-iPod MP3 players were,” says Robert Brunner, founder of Ammunition, a design firm that worked on Barnes & Noble’s Nook. “It’s still very early and development is just beginning to ramp up.”

Since the launch of Amazon’s Kindle in 2007, e-readers have become a fast-growing category of consumer electronics products. But with the entry of the iPad, the e-reader market is at a crossroads. With its 9.7-inch color LCD screen, the iPad supports not just movies and web surfing, but also has an e-reading feature. Apple will also begin selling e-books for the iPad through its iTunes store.

But e-reader enthusiasts say that dedicated digital reading devices will continue to thrive despite competition from Apple.

Let’s take a look at five technologies that e-reader makers are betting on to keep their products relevant.

Better touchscreen and multi-touch could improve user interface in e-readers.

Touch

Touchscreens have been pivotal to the recent success of smartphones, so it is no surprise that e-reader manufacturers are looking at ways to bring the technology to their devices.

Unlike phones, e-readers are used primarily to consume content, which makes touch-based interaction a perfect fit. Flipping a page, clicking on a link or highlighting a paragraph is easier using simple touch-based gestures.

But touch on e-readers today is where it was on smartphones before the arrival of the iPhone: It’s primitive, not widely used and full of compromises. For instance, the resistive touchscreen on Sony’s e-reader does not offer the smooth, fast response that the capacitive touchscreen of an iPhone or a Motorola Droid can.

Adding a touch-sensitive upper layer to a screen also dims the display slightly, a real problem with the already low contrast ratio of E Ink screens.

“We are so used to responsive displays that if we touch something and it doesn’t react immediately, it is disappointing,” says Brunner. Nook has added touch into its secondary, 3.5-inch LCD touchscreen, instead of the larger E Ink display. Amazon hopes to take the technology to the next step.

The company recently acquired Touchco, a early-stage technology startup that could allow for a touch-capable layer to be embedded below the screen, instead of adding it on top as current touch technologies do.

E Ink is also working on its own to create touch-sensitive displays that put pressure sensors behind the display. The company hopes to have the first version ready by the end of the year.

Meanwhile, SiPix, another electronic paper display maker, is offering touchscreens that it claims are better than the resistive e-paper displays seen in devices such as the Sony Touch Reader. SiPix’s touchscreen will be available in e-book readers created by French company Bookeen.

Qualcomm's Mirasol technology promises low-power color displays.

Color

If there’s one thing that most e-reader enthusiasts want from the next generation of devices, it is color.

Sure, die-hard readers will scoff at the notion that color could enhance the experience of reading plain text, and they’d be right. But color would be key to enhancing illustrations, photos, covers and maybe even the clarity of the fonts themselves.

Display manufacturers are competing intensely to solve this problem with a variety of technologies. E Ink promises to have a color screen available by the end of the year. Qualcomm is already shopping around its 5.7-inch color display called Mirasol, which could debut in an e-reader by fall. Meanwhile, Pixel Qi, a California-based startup, is showing LCD displays that can do double duty as color screens as well as low-power, black-and-white displays.

Now that Apple iPad has paved the way, e-reader makers could also be re-evaluating the LCD as an alternative to the bistable, low-power but black-and-white E Ink display. Despite its ability to offer full color and touch, LCD screens didn’t set the e-reading market on fire because of their low battery life and the perceived issue of eyestrain.

If the iPad is successful, it won’t take long for Amazon and other ambitious companies to produce LCD-based tabletlike devices that are optimized for digital books and magazines, says Brunner.

Flexible screens will be lightweight and shatterproof.

Flexibility

E Ink is talking about flexible displays for the next generation of its screen technology.

Flexibility doesn’t mean you’ll be able to roll up the screens and stuff them in your backpack, but it is key to making readers with larger screens light enough to hold conveniently in one hand.

Instead of a layer of glass (which is at the foundation of most displays available currently) the next generation of e-readers will have lightweight screens that are based on a metal foil.

“Flexible doesn’t mean the display is floppy,” says Sri Peruvemba, vice-president of marketing for E Ink. “What flexible does mean is that it is lightweight, shatterproof and rugged.”

E Ink’s flexible displays combine a thin stainless steel foil transistor substrate with electronic-ink display material that is coated on a plastic sheet. That results in a screen that is extremely lightweight and slim, allowing for newer hardware design.

Weight is an area where E Ink can claim advantage over LCD displays. For instance, despite its glass, the 9.7-inch Kindle DX is about 27 percent lighter than the similar sized iPad: The Kindle DX weights 1.1 lbs compared to the iPad’s 1.5 lbs. With a foil-based substrate, the DX could be lighter by another 40 percent, says Peruvemba.

“When you get to a 11-inch screen size, if you put a glass substrate, you need two hands to just hold the device,” he says. “That’s why tablets haven’t taken off for reading. People want a device where they can have a free hand.”

The e-reader interface has much room for improvement.

Better Software

There’s more to a gadget than just good hardware. An elegantly designed user interface can put a gadget head and shoulders above its peers.

That’s where most e-readers have fallen short. E-reader manufacturers’ focus on hardware design means their user interfaces often feel like an afterthought.

Almost all e-readers today lack the interactive experience that could make reading digital books truly interesting, says Brunner. “If you look at the current products out there, they are they are just repurposing content from print and delivering it on a different medium without adding the value generated by that medium,” he says.

Meanwhile, Blio, e-reading software, has shown it is possible to develop an interface that could inject life into e-books. Blio is currently available for PCs, iPhone and iPod Touch. A similar interface for an e-reader could change the game.

Another way to enhance the experience may be through opening up e-readers to third-party apps, as Amazon has done with the Kindle. That could bring additional features to the devices and maybe even alternate readers with more elegant interfaces.

Better contrast in e-reader screens is high on the wish list of consumers and device makers. This photo approximates the difference between E Ink (left) and paper (right)

More Contrast

E Ink’s displays may be the current industry standard. But what they offer in clarity and readability, they lack in contrast: Their look  is decidedly gray, like an Etch A Sketch.

The screens are also slow to change, sometimes taking as much as a second to switch between pages.

Fortunately for readers, the company plans to introduce new screens this year that will come with a faster response times and offer twice the contrast as existing products.

“The fundamental advantage is better contrast,” says Peruvemba. “The blacks will be blacker and the whites whiter. That’s a major request from our customers.”

See Also:

• Plastic Logic Aims New Que E-Reader at Business Users
• Roundup: E-Reader Gift Guide
• Slim, Large Screen E-Reader Skiff to Debut on Sprint
• Why E-Books Look So Ugly

Photos: Jon Snyder/Wired.com