Kindle 3 rumor with touchscreen 8.5 x 11-inch display returns

Now that the Kindle 2 is out, it's time to get back onto the Kindle rumor mill. You might recall that in addition to the early leaks of the device that become the Kindle 2, a bigger screened Kindle mimicking an 8.5 x 11-inch sheet of paper for students was rumored. According to DigiTimes' sources apparently within Prime View International (PVI), the makers of the Kindle's electrophoretic display (EPD), Amazon's next Kindle will launch by the end of this year and will be "larger in size and equipped with touch functions." Of course, that's no big stretch to the imagination -- Plastic Logic has been kicking around its 8.5 x 11-inch touchscreen eBook reader ('Shopped with a Kindle logo above) for months now with a plan to launch in 2010. Let's just see if Amazon can get this out in time for the back to school selling season.

[Via Mobile Read]

[(Unverified) Posted Feb 28th 2009 9:05AM]

Hearst to launch a wireless e-reader:

http://money.cnn.com/2009/02/27/technology/copeland_hearst.fortune/

[dsimoes Posted Feb 28th 2009 10:16AM]

I think these devices would be a huge success if they would have a browser built in....
I still need to carry my notebook around to surf and do random research... now if you join access to a library with the web, you got a winner...
Do you think they will do that? Please, don't tell me that they fit different purposes! As of now, I do sit with my hardcopy book and a notebook nearby for random research as i said....

[FILA Posted Feb 28th 2009 1:21PM]

its just gonna be one big ass touch screen one of these versions, till flexible OLED's come out mainstream where you can fold it up to put it in your pocket

[(Unverified) Posted Mar 25th 2009 10:45AM]

Flexible OLEDs are nice for some purposes, but their single biggest drawback in an electronic reader is that they draw power, even if it is negligible, to keep a static display on. Eink and epaper do not. Power is only utilized when a display is updated, so batteries can easily last through days, or sometimes even weeks of use because so much more time is spent viewing and reading individual pages than actually turning them. Of course, the upshot of this is that such devices would not be suitable for content that changes rapidly, such as animated displays. This isn't a huge problem because the focus of these sort of displays is the display of static content anways, such as the pages from a book. Further, e-ink is a fully photon reflective technology, meaning that ambient light alone is used to illuminate the display. This results in a surface that has high contrast and feels as natural to read as paper or any other normally printed material. In truth, an electronic reader is genuinely only a substitute for plain ordinary paper... but in large quantities, paper is not remotely convenient to cart around.

When someone makes the first truly 8.5x11" display in an electronic reader (plastic logic's new reader is still lacking in that area, the actual display being still about 25% too small), and makes it possible for the device to hold and display user content (as opposed to being restricted only to "approved" content that is provided only by particular sources), I'm inclined to think there's going to be an absolutely staggering adoption of that reader by business professionals and university students.