IAC Prodigy e-reader does EV-DO, HSPA, WiMAX and WiFi

While you might say Amazon's Kindle is lucky to have a single CDMA / EV-DO radio built-in, IAC would likely venture to disagree. Over at Computex, said firm was showcasing its Prodigy e-reader, which just so happens to pack every major wireless radio we can think of. EV-DO Rev. A? Check. WCDMA / HSPA? Check. WiMAX? Oh, definitely. 802.11b/g WiFi? For sure, dudes. And the fun doesn't stop there -- it's packing a 6-inch 800 x 600 e-paper touchscreen, 256MB of NAND Flash memory, 128MB of DDR memory, 2GB of NAND storage and a Marvell PXA310 processor. If all goes well, this little bugger will ship in Q4 over in Taiwan, but it'll be a cold day in Hades before it arrives on US soil. Video's after the break.

[OneLove @ Jun 4th 2009 9:06PM]

pwnd

[skyblaze @ Jun 4th 2009 9:10PM]

LETS get together and FEEEL alllllright

[skyblaze @ Jun 4th 2009 9:11PM]

lol.... had to do it. bob marley ftw

[Jon Doe. @ Jun 4th 2009 11:30PM]

Yah lets also ignore how fucking thick that thing is. And no word on battery life. My Kindle 2 gets about 2.5 weeks on a single charge with moderate reading every day. Sorry but having every damn feature in the device isn't epic WIN. Frankly the only thing I want in the Kindle is a MicroSD card and color....eventually.

[Sam Zebian @ Jun 4th 2009 9:11PM]

all you need is one wireless standard on these, like hsdpa, which is worldwide, and maybe wifi for faster speeds. You don't need all of these different connection types in an e-book reader, which is why I'm fine with EV-DO on my kindle 2

[Joseph @ Jun 4th 2009 9:17PM]

You don't NEED a Kindle at all. Just read books with paper.

DUH, of course you don't need it, but technology is ever evolving, so why shouldn't it here?

That's just about one of the stupidest answers / comments I've seen.

[Ellianth @ Jun 4th 2009 11:29PM]

I guess now would be a good time to point out that adding extra components costs money. And while I'm at it, I'll point out that they're no way in hell the manufacturer is gonna eat the cost for you.

[BigD145 @ Jun 4th 2009 9:17PM]

Engrish setting prease?

I'm joking. If it's a good price and can handle Roman letters, I'd get it shipped.

[Jim E @ Jun 4th 2009 9:56PM]

Awesome! Does it let me buy books from the largest online book dea.... oh nevermind. ;)

[Omen @ Jun 4th 2009 10:04PM]

How about a reasonably priced e-reader under 100 dollars? I don't need the fancy shit.

[Josh Warner @ Jun 4th 2009 10:56PM]

I have to completely agree. Stop trying to make these things worldwide cellphones with every wireless radio known to mankind. That's what CELLPHONES and/or MIDs are for; an e-ink screen is silly to use to browse anything other than pages of text. Impulse purchases which have worked well in the music department, aren't going to translate quite so smoothly to these devices as each book occupies considerably more time. Buy a half dozen, and you're probably good for at least a week. These things don't need to be able to get new 'content' wirelessly.

Still waiting for a reasonably priced e-ink READER, without a phone/MID/e-store identity crisis. As I suspect most of the silent majority is as well. When somebody delivers quality (read: metal) construction, open file handling, and a solid screen/interface under $200 this market will actually begin to get interesting. Andy by 'interesting' I mean that company will print money Nintendo DS-style.

[sam @ Jun 5th 2009 9:32AM]

@Josh: I agree it's no use for anything other than books and you don't need a huge range of wireless standards. At least wi-fi support, however, would be nice, so that you can buy books from an online store without having to plug the thing into your computer and install some dubious software there (which probably won't work on a Mac either).

Of course it would be also be nice if you could configure a range of online stores all using a standard open format so that they both sell books for any device, and can be added as either default or an option on any device that has an integrated store UI... Devices being locked to stores, or 'convenience-locked' to stores (so it's really hard to buy books anywhere except the manufacturer's stored) is probably the biggest problem with commercial ebook readers, even ahead of the second-biggest problem, which is that as a proportion, virtually no books want are [legally] available...

[bminata2007 @ Jun 5th 2009 1:51AM]

3G, EVDO, HSPA, Wifi, Wimax are all good.. gives you more option. But that thing is so frickin' ugly!

[Sarcathron @ Jun 6th 2009 10:59PM]

A typical e-book in pdf format is 500-100kB, takes seconds to upload to the e-book reader and a week to read. So yeah.. all those WiFi standards are CRUCIAL for an e-book reader (judging by the praises dedicated to Kindle, for the rest of the readers are only usb connectable). Store system this store system that- use paypal, download, save on hdd, upload to reader- READ.
Holly Flying Spaghetti Monster! 99.99% of the time we spend reading, what is the difference if uploading a book takes a few seconds longer?
Internet? Thanks, I'll browse on my desktop instead :)
And they should not include the mp3 playback feature on e-book readers either.