Smart Devices announces R7 e-book reader to a world in apathy
By Joseph L. Flatley 
posted April 7th 2010 4:21PM
posted April 7th 2010 4:21PM
It's a fact of life: Every company gets into e-readers sooner or later. Therefore, Smart Devices has surprised no one by announcing that it will be branching off from its usual MID fare to launch one of its own. The R7 sports a color LCD (no E ink for these folks!), 7-inch (800 x 600) resistive touchscreen, buttons, and some form of storage (presumably). How's that for vague? We do know one thing, however -- seeing as how the company has been peddling the same functionality with its MIDs forever, and seeing as how the budget e-reader is the new budget mp3 player, this thing better be either really awesome in the specs department, or really really cheap.
"It's a fact of life: Every company gets into e-readers sooner or later."
What about Amish companies?
@thejdude Even Amish companies, yes. They aren't apposed to technology, just new ones. So they are probably making eReaders using first gen tech.
@Guy You mean out of paper?
Wow, taking all ebook critisism and bringing it to one device
Time will tell...looks alright though
some say this is an android device
@htd
All we know is... he's called THE STIG!
And here I still read books. That is to say, I buy/borrow them and let them collect dust on my shelf.
Not enough stickers on it for my liking
@MattsZ
Very true. Stickers make things faster anyway so if they covered this bad boy it would make the Tegra2 look like crap.
Money is money. I'm rich! (Throws 37 ones in the air)
@Baconbits Are you keeping the 50 cents?
Sorry engadget, but if you are going to talk about one Chinese manufacturer why don't you talk about all of them? There are A LOT of ebook readers coming to market in China RIGHT NOW. The problem is that they are not going to be readily available internationally. I don't understand why this is even considered news. It isn't to me.
Guess it's based on the SmartQ (V)7, which supports Linux, Android and WinCE. Pretty sweet devices. A lot of people already use those as an color ebook reader.
@BigKing Judging from the functionality of this device, probably not
@xaueious
The V7 practically offers the same functionality. I'm pretty sure they won't write a whole OS. Maybe they create a front-end for one of the operating systems.
Wait a minute...I thought e-ink no longer matters in an e-book reader? The "Kindle Killer" doesn't have e-ink...why bring it up now?
There aren't enough readers to support all of these e-books. If this isn't using e-ink then it has already lost heavy readers who are most likely to buy an e-book, so it's an e-book reader going after those in the casual reading crowd who are willing to buy a dedicated device. That's a very small niche.
@FitFan That was supposed to say "there aren't enough readers to support all of these ebook readers". I'm a reader; not a writer. :-p
LCD isn't an e-reader imo. It is a purpose built Slate. Grrrrrr.
"This thing better be either really awesome in the specs department, or really really cheap."
I'm gonna guess "really cheap."
Unless you consider compatibility with every public-domain file format you've ever heard of (and a few you haven't) to be awesome specs. And maybe with Atari/Coleco/NES/SNES/Genesis/20 other old game systems emulation thrown in, with its 256MB non-upgradable RAM...
The only thing that makes this device interesting is the fact that the Smart Devices company is building an Android 2.1 interface for it.
http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMTY2MzgzMjky.html