While Sony's Reader has never received the enormous press or enjoyed the supposed whirlwind sales of Amazon's Kindle e-book, and is certainly lacking in, erm, EV-DOness, the Reader is about to get one trick the Kindle doesn't have yet: openness. Sony will be shooting out an update on Thursday to allow the Reader to use purchased books in the protected EPUB format from whoever is peddling them, instead of being tied to the Sony's e-book store, or just DRM-free text and PDF documents. That openness should help Sony beef up its selection -- which is lagging behind Amazon's -- and will hopefully mark a bit of a turning point in the e-book market to more standards and, more importantly, more books.

We Americans have had the opportunity to pick up Sony's Reader for what seems like eons, but you poor bookworms holed up in the UK have been neglected unjustly. No more, as Sony has just opened up the phone lines for folks eager to claim their spot in line the queue. No need in rehashing the specifications you already know -- it's still the same ole PRS-505, just way more expensive in US dollars.

[Via MobileRead, thanks Alex]

E-book readers are becoming quickly becoming the new cheapo MP3 player, what with unusual designs, promises of salvation from paper, and now diving prices. Enter the Astak Mentor. This series of readers comes in three sizes -- 5-, 6-, and 9.7-inch -- and is based on either Linux or Windows CE. So what's new here? A sub-$200 price tag for the 5-inch version, touchscreens, Bluetooth, and WiFi. Those three latter features come standard on the 9.7-incher, and are optional on the smaller two. Look for them in October from less-than-$200 to $350, or until someone else comes out with a $99 reader.

[Via Crave]

CyBook's Gen3 e-book reader has been out for a while, and it looks like there's a slight spec bump in the making -- the Gen3 New Edition now features 512MB of storage, more stable firmware with better battery life and a more responsive interface, and a slightly revised housing. Owners of older Gen3 units will be able to download the new firmware, but sadly there's no word on whether the new rev comes with Bobby Brown or Johnny Gill.

ECTACO wants you to know something: it's about to change the way you read... forever! That's right, as we journey into the future, nothing will ever be the same about books, reading, or reading books. According to the company, its jetBook reader will allow you to, "Kiss your old-fashioned, dusty library goodbye," and you can rest easy because, "Not a single tree was cut down to make it!" The "completely amazing" bright red device houses a 5-inch grayscale display, and features multi-language support, bookmarking ability, playback of MP3 files, and an SD slot. The game- and life-changing reader -- which will crush and dismember your stupid, old, and ugly real books -- is available now for just $349.95.

Sure, Philippe Starck may not care for the Kindle, but an open letter posted on Amazon's front page suggests he's in the minority. We already knew that the company was having a difficult time filling orders, but we had no idea the wait for buyers would warrant what amounts to a public apology from Jeff Bezos. Apparently, the online superstore is drawing heat for six-week delays on delivery for some customers, and is scrambling to get itself into an "order today, ship today" scheme. The original release of the device sold out in just 5 1/2 hours says the letter, which might explain why no one is hacking it -- no one has it.

[Thanks, Michael]

It seemed obvious back in mid-December of last year that Polymer Vision wasn't going to nail its timetable for production versions of the 3G-equipped, e-ink wonder known as the Readius. Now word is that the company will have a commercial version of the phone / e-book reader available sometime in mid-2008 in Italy via Telecom Italia -- provided that everything goes according to its diabolical plans. If you'll recall, the device features a foldable, grayscale, 5-inch QVGA display, and boasts a slew of features, including HSDPA, a 400MHz ARM CPU, and a battery life up to "six times longer" than current mobile phones. We'll admit we're intrigued, but don't make us wait too long over here, okay?

Although there's no arguing that the 6-inch e-ink display used in both the Kindle and the Sony PRS-505 looks beautiful, we're not exactly huge fans of endless scrolling -- which is why we're pretty intrigued by these shots of the Hanlin V9 that just popped up on the Mobileread forums. The update to the V3 features a 9.7-inch display that definitely cranks the overall dimensions, but being able to view a full letter-size page seems like a tangible enough benefit -- and the addition of WiFi, EV-DO, and handwriting recognition just sweetens the pot. Apparently there are some issues mass-producing that screen, but when they get sorted pricing will land somewhere between $599 and $699 -- numbers that will probably keep this thing at the intriguing curiosity level for now.

Read - Hands-on with the V9 at Mobileread
Read - V9 product page

Amazon isn't disclosing how many Kindles it actually had ready to go, but apparently the idea of a tiny e-book reader with free EV-DO and the visual flair of an Apple IIc hit home for quite a few people, because they sold out in just five and a half hours. Amazon's site says they'll be back in stock on the 29th, but availability is first-come, first-served, so it looks like you'll have to act fast if you want to get one before gift-giving time sets in.

[Via Blankbaby]

Although it hasn't had the buzz of some other longstanding rumors, we've heard a lot about Amazon's Kindle ebook reader over the past year -- everything from FCC pics to tagged content to a supposed October 15th ship date, which came and went with nary a peep from the etailer. Now Brad Stone at the New York Times -- who predicted that ship date to begin with -- says that his sources have told him that the Kindle has been delayed (shocking), but will still make it out by the end of the year. Stone also says Amazon is still perfecting the service and wants to have as much Kindle-ready content (Kindling?) available at launch as it can -- and that the built-in EV-DO modem will pull down content over Sprint's network. That's news to us, but until we actually see this thing we're going to take our Kindle with a large grain of salt.

[Via mobileread]

Sony just went live with their latest eBook reader, the PRS-505. Of course, this isn't the first time we've seen it but it's always good to get an official release. Available "this month" for $300 in silver and dark blue, Sony's 500-followup features a new electronic paper display that is more responsive with a better contrast than its predecessor while offering expansion for both Memory Stick Duo or SD memory cards. A new USB Mass Storage mode allows for a lickity-quick transfer of files when connected to your PC. Better yet perhaps, is to see a late 90's indie band coming out in support of Sony, eh Joey?

[Via MobileRead, thanks Alex]

Given the many opportunities Sony's had to demo new gear in the past month, you'd think we'd have seen this earlier, but it looks like the company's latest ebook reader, the PRS-505, will be making its grand debut on the website of Chicago's own Abt Electronics. The update to the original Sony Reader will come in either silver or blue, feature a slightly redesigned layout, twice the internal memory, and may potentially rock what seems like an updated display. No word on any other changes, but it looks like the price is the same at $299.

[Thanks, hamster]

Talk about a long time coming, as what is now Polymer Vision has seemed to finally put all the pieces together and produce an actual working product from the idea envisioned by Philips around two years ago. We knew the spinoff was looking to commercialize the product later this year, but after nearly 24 months of coming up empty, a bit of understandable skepticism begins to seep through. Nevertheless, the firm's rollable, pocket-friendly "Cellular-Book" was out and showing its stuff at 3GSM, proving that there's at least something there to put on store shelves. Although the unit on display was indeed a standalone device -- sporting 16 shades of grey, USB, "10-days" of battery life, 4GB of internal storage, and GPRS, EDGE, and DVB-H connectivity just like we'd heard -- Polymer Vision is actually hoping to integrate its e-paper technology into mobile handset displays in the near future. Sadly, there still didn't seem to be any hints of a release date for the nifty pocket reader, but be sure to click on through for the very long awaited pictures of the Readius in action.

[Via Slashdot]

First off, contrary to the beliefs of certain commenters, we absolutely do not hate Sony -- we just think that after the infamous PS3 and BDP-S1 Blu-ray delays, the company would want to do everything possible to make sure that another highly-anticipated product doesn't fall into the same cycle. Yet that's exactly what we're seeing with the upcoming PRS-500 eBook reader first announced at CES -- originally scheduled for a spring release before slipping to a summer time frame -- whose launch has now been pushed back once again to sometime this fall. According to an email Sony sent out to potential customers -- wisely thanking them for their patience -- the e-ink-based Reader will now be shipping "in time for the holidays," which hopefully doesn't refer to December 24th. Sample launch titles include Freakanomics and The Da Vinci Code, although by the time you can actually get your hands on the hardware, you'll probably have already read those books along with many of the other initial offerings. As much as we'd like to own one of these handy ~$350 devices -- and despite having no need whatsoever for a bunch of aviation documents -- we're pretty close to just biting the bullet and shelling out $900 for the eFlyBook version of iRex's iLiad that went on sale yesterday.

[Thanks, Curt C. and Riley P.]

From what we can tell (machine translation often thwarts our best attempts at fact checking), Hitachi will be joining the likes of display manufacturers iRex and Sony when they release a commercial eBook reader in Japan tomorrow. The black-and-white e-ink model, supposedly called the "Albirey" and developed with technology from Bridgestone, seems to sport a WiFi connection with "the possibility to modify making use of radio communication," whatever that means, and comes in a package with standard A4 paper-size dimensions. The Albirey should be available tomorrow starting at what Nikkei Net is claiming to be 4,000,000 yen, which is probably the result of some Google Language shenanigans, 'cause that's like $36,000.

Update: Once again, our readers have stepped in and succeeded where machine translation has failed: apparently the price quoted is for a batch of 10 units, which indicates that this unit probably intended for commercial displays and not consumer eBook consumption. Also, make sure to check out the comments for the full specs.