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Prototype mobile showcases e-ink keypad
An e-ink primary display on a cellphone? Eh, that's so 2006. On display at Japan's CEATEC show this week is a prototype clamshell that flips the concept on its head, moving the e-ink down below. The benefits are pretty obvious -- different keypad configurations can be shown in different phone modes, a tactic that's been explored before -- but unlike phones that use OLED or LCD displays, e-ink only requires power when it's being changed, so you get the combined benefit of configurable keys while consuming virtually no additional energy over a standard layout. Combine the concept with physical ridges between keys and we figure this could be a pretty killer setup since you wouldn't be losing tactile feedback, either. We see a good fifteen or twenty concept phones for every device that actually sees production, but since some folks bothered to throw together a physical prototype here, we're cautiously optimistic this thing might see the light of day.[Via Ubergizmo]
E Ink watch giveaway winner!
We know you've been waiting patiently to find out who won the super rare E Ink watch -- congratulations to Chris Garman, who's now the luckiest watch-wearer on his block! To everyone else who gave it a shot, thanks for entering. Oh, and stick close, we'll have another super rare giveaway shortly.
Cybook Gen3 e-book reader enters production, coming in September
We already had a pretty good idea of what Bookeen had in store with its new Cybook e-book reader, but the company has now gotten all official with it, letting out word that the device has entered production and is set to be available in September. Now dubbed the Cybook Gen3, the device makes use of E Ink's Vizplex e-paper technology to give you a 166 dpi resolution on its 6-inch screen, and promises to last for 8,000 page flips before needing a recharge. What's more, Bookeen's also announced that it's struck a deal with Mobipocket to license and distribute the Mobipocket e-book format, giving Cybook users access to some 50,000 titles. According to Bookeen, it'll be offering the Cybook in a variety of different "packs," the lowest cost of which will set you back $350.[Thanks, David R]
E Ink watch giveaway reminder
We know, there's hardly a chance you'd forget to toss your name in the hat for the last E Ink watch to ever be given away (or sold, for that matter), but in case it slipped your mind momentarily, the contest is only open until 11:59pm EDT on Friday, July 13th. Psst, that's just over three days from now for those sans a timepiece!
Giveaway: super rare E Ink watch!
If you're at all interested in a chronograph featuring an electrophoretic display, your options are few and expensive: head to Japan and try to mug a geeky salaryman, or hit up eBay in the hops of placing the winning bid on an export Seiko Spectrum. Or, you know, enter our giveaway for super rare hand-built E Ink corporation watch. Here's the story.E Ink, the company that developed that whole electronic ink / electrophoretic display thing, had just nine custom watches hand-built -- eight will be worn on the wrists of members of the company's board, and the last one will be given away here on Engadget! The watch itself is an analogue timepiece with a monochrome digital face that shows date, time, and numbers for the hands in white on black or black on white. Yes, the watch even comes with a certificate of authenticity. So, want to take it home? Read on, check out the gallery below, and good luck!A few rules (yeah, there are always rules): Leave a comment below -- tell us which crappy watch (if any) this fancy E Ink piece will be replacing. You may only enter this specific giveaway once. If you enter this giveaway more than once you'll be automatically disqualified, etc. (Yes, we have robots that thoroughly check to ensure fairness.) In other words, be careful when commenting and if you submit more than once, only activate one comment, ok? The prize is open to anyone worldwide! Contest is open until 11:59pm EDT on Friday, July 13th. %Gallery-4608%
Bookeen set to release new Cybook E-Ink reader
Bookeen's Cybook has already been around longer than most e-book readers, and it looks like it'll soon be taking on yet another incarnation, one that finds it looking not unlike eREAD's STAReBOOK reader. Like the STAReBOOK, the new Cybook boast a 6-inch E Ink display with an 800x600 resolution and four shades of gray, and weighs in at a relatively lightweight 6.5 ounces. According to MobileRead, the latest rumor is that the Cybook will also support Open eBook, PDF, HTML, RTF, and Mobipocket document formats, along with MP3 audio, among other possible formats. While other specs are still up in the air, it looks like we won't have to wait too much longer for the complete rundown, as it's apparently set to launch in the US and Europre later this summer for about $350.
NUUT intros NP-601 e-book reader with Vizplex display
Those curious to see just how much E Ink Corp.'s new and improved Vizplex display enhances the e-reading experience now have an actual e-book reader they can get their hands on, although they'll have to find a way to get one out of South Korea. Apart from that new 6-inch, 600 x 800 display (which promises twice the refresh speed and 20% better brightness than previous models), NUUT's NP-601 e-book reader is a fairly standard affair, with 512MB of internal memory, an SD card slot for expansion, and a headphone jack to take advantage of some of its (unspecified) non-reading functions. Look for this one to set you back about $300.[Via MobileRead]
E Ink Corp. announces "Vizplex" tech to speed, brighten displays
E Ink's first-gen electronic ink tech powers a nice little crop of e-books and a few other miscellaneous gadgets, but the slow refresh and less-than-stellar contrast offered by current devices have held them back from wider acceptance. The E Ink folks are attempting to address some these problems with the new Vizplex display technology, which doubles refresh speeds, and boosts brightness by 20 percent. E Ink is also planning to expand much further beyond those cookie cutter 6-inch e-books, with 1.9-inch, 5-inch, 6-inch, 8-inch and 9.7-inch display sizes. E Ink has also prepped a new "Metronome Display Controller" which boosts grayscale depth, and supports more sizes and resolutions, while also offering better integration with other device components to reduce costs. The developer kit for these news new displays and components is out now, so it's just a matter of time before manufactures manage to finagle them into a new line of cookie cutter e-books.
Jinke / HanLin iBook eReader revs to V3
With a name like the iBook eReader there's just no way a Chinese e-ink peddler like Jinke / HanLin could go wrong selling in the Ukraine, right comrade? Well, not unless they attempt to release in the US -- a country where the iBook trademark holds some weight -- which apparently is the intended destination for the €240 ($325) e-book reader. We can supposedly have high hopes for it, though, being equipped with a four-shade SVGA display, WiFi, optional touchscreen interface, and, of course, Linux. Expect this September or October. Or not.[Via MobileRead]
E Ink's blueChute bluetooth enabled e-ink concept
Even with certain forms of e-ink displays starting to drip drip drip into real world settings -- see what we did there? -- it's still unlikely that you'll meet someone on the street with some e-ink tech on their person. Until e-ink gets cheap and ordinary people can gaze into their very own super high contrast electronic copy of the NY Times, we'll have to settle for sneak peeks at concept devices like this, E Ink's blueChute e-ink tablet. Even though the exact functionality of the device has yet to be decided -- currently it's functioning as a glorified demo platform -- the blueChute's Bluetooth support and microSD slot would suggest that it could be used to display maps streamed from a mobile phone, or have it display widget-like information from a nearby tethered computer. Unfortunately, as the device's overview states, all that "depends on software which probably won't ever get written," so for now it's just wishful thinking: just like almost everything else to do with e-ink at present.
STAReBOOK STK-101 reviewed
As the ebook market widens, it's only natural that competition will start heating up, and the STAReBOOK STK-101 is quite a good example of a small player making a big impact. The STK-101's main claim to fame is built-in MP3 playback, which with an included 512MB SD card and the ability to listen to music while you read, sounds pretty well executed. Fortunately, STAReBOOK didn't stop there, and have made quite the peppy and intuitive reader. CommanderROR, who reviewed the unit, found book loading and page turning to be much snappier than his iRex Iliad, and battery life looks to be quite good as well. Obviously, the 6-inches of E ink screen isn't quite as impressive as the 8-inch Iliad, but it should be fine for most reading tasks, especially considering the Sony Reader's 6-inch form factor. Page navigation bests that of both the Sony Reader and the Iliad, with easy to use bookmarks, and a simple method of inputting page numbers using the cursor. Unfortunately, the biggest drawback to the STAReBOOK might be the biggest deal breaker: the book only supports .stk books, and the included converter deals badly with styling and only includes one hard-to-read font. Luckily, JPG books work fine, so a PDF-to-JPG converter should be able to supply you with reading material well enough, but it's a far cry from the open format support of the Sony Reader and iRex Iliad.[Thanks, Branko C.]
Toshiba Matsushita electronic paper alternative hits mass production
Toshiba Matsushita Display Technology looks to be making a big play in the rapidly growing electronic paper/ink industry, announcing that its 5-inch monochrome VGA display has gone into mass production. While less flexible than some alternatives, Toshiba Matsushita's display looks like it should be relatively easy on the eyes, with a 12:1 contrast ratio, 20 ms response time, and 16 levels of gray, with some internal and external reflective mojo eliminating the need for a backlight. Obviously not enough to cut it in a PMP, but more than adequate for some paperless page-turning. Just as importantly, the display keeps power consumption down to a minimum, consuming just 4mW of power in 2-level greyscale mode and 20mW in full 16-level mode. Unfortunately, the company hasn't yet provided any firm production numbers, nor has it given any indication when the displays might actually find their way into some products.[Via MobileRead]
Plastic Logic to build first electronic paper plant
U.K.-based Plastic Logic has announced that it has secured some $100 million in funding to build the world's first factory dedicated to manufacturing plastic electronics on a commercial scale. More specifically, the factory's set to produce flexible active matrix display modules, aimed at making various electronic reading devices a little more portable and a little less hard on the eyes. According to the company, the plant will be built in Dresden, Germany, with production set to ramp up sometime in 2008 at an initial capacity of more than a million display modules per year.[Via Slashdot]
Plastic Logic bumps their flexible E Ink display to 150ppi
Considering that only one E Ink display has made it into a major device on the US market so far, and virtually zero flexible display devices exist, you wouldn't think there'd be as much crazy competition surrounding the various related technologies to this eensy commercial space. Still, that hasn't stopped us from drooling on these technologies since forever, and Plastic Logic just keeps plugging away at them pixels. They've just upped their flexible active matrix game to 150ppi, nearing on a workable newspaper resolution, but still a fair bit away from truly matching paper and ink for sharpness and contrast. The E Ink-display is just part of long line of prototype displays from Plastic Logic, but a commercial display is still a good bit off -- they're hoping to mass produce a 10-inch 150ppi flexible display in 2008.[Via MobileRead]
Sony Reader review roundup
Alright, you've already heard our take on the thing, but we've got a few more reviews for you from some old school tech journos. The general consensus isn't great. Sure, the Sony Reader packs a quite exciting new display technology, allowing for long usage times and easy-on-the-eyes viewing, but so do paper books. The main actual benefit the Sony Reader offers you over traditional pulp is that you can store books aplenty in a quite small amount of flash memory, and you can buy the titles online at your leisure. Otherwise, the Sony Reader seems to take quite a few steps back, offering awkward controls, a hard to use online store and a few other baffling functional limitations. Online prices aren't great (luckily, Sony will be including a $50 gift certificate if you buy a Reader before the end of the year), despite the virtually complete elimination of production and distribution costs, and while the Sony Connect app works well enough with pushing around RSS, TXT, RTF, DOC and PDF files, traditional 8.5 x 11 PDF files are pretty much unreadable on the Sony Reader's low-res 6-inch screen. Other funkiness includes the 10 percent skipping buttons -- there's no way to go directly to a page number or search a book text -- and an annoying 1 second refresh between each page turn. It looks like the final word on the Reader is that you should probably hold onto those dead tree editions of your favorite novels at least until some 2nd generation eBooks start popping up.Read - APRead - Walt MossbergRead - David Pogue
Sony Reader PRS-500 gets launch date, price
We told you it wasn't too far off from release this morning when we showed you our hands-on shots of the device, and now Sony has made good on our promise by finally giving us a price and launch date for their Sony Reader PRS-500. Sony is bringing this one in "on or before" October 31st for $350, and is currently accepting pre-orders at their online store. It sure took them long enough, but we're glad they didn't slip on that $350 pricepoint. As for specs -- in case you haven't managed to pick them up by now -- the E Ink unit sports a 6-inch display with 170 pixels per inch of 4-level grayscale action. There's also 7,500 page turns of battery life, and while we're not quite sure we're ready to get locked into Sony's latest proprietary DRM in the form of BBeB, we're sure we can find plenty of use for unit between the other document formats supported and the repeated self-congratulating viewings of our own RSS feeds.
Sony's PRS-500 e-book reader in the wild
Speaking of the future, we always thought that by the 21st century we'd all have digital pads to read stuff on, instead of these old-fashioned analog "books." Well, that's what Sony's betting on with its PRS-500, anyway, which has just been spotted in the wild for the first time -- in the hands of none other than Phillip Torrone of MAKE magazine (and Engadget) fame. We'd previously reported that this $350-ish e-book reader was going to be delayed (again), but that somehow it would be shipping in time for "the holidays." Given Sony's other problems of late, though, we wouldn't be surprised if the company was referring to our next summer holiday. Remember, regular ol' books may be low-tech, but at least they don't explode. Keep reading for another snap, and then head over to MAKE for the full lowdown...
Hands on with ARINC's iLiad-based eFlyBook
We had a chance to spend some quality time this week with ARINC's eFlyBook, essentially an iRex iLiad all gussied up in aviation trim. True, we know the subject matter may not interest the lion's share of our readers, but finding appropriate vertical markets may prove crucial to the short-term success of the iLiad and products like it -- besides, the eFlyBook is a dead ringer for its unbranded sibling, so if you're in the eBook market, do read on.
Next iPod an eBook reader?
Engadget is reporting that reliable sources claim that the next iPod will have plenty of screen real estate and have an eBook reading mode. It seems that a major publishing shop just sent Apple all of their archived manuscripts, so unless Steve has been jonesing for some reading material books might be coming to an iPod near you.I, personally, can't wait for this since I'm a big reader and I would love eBooks to really take off and iPod involvement can't but help.
Sony's PRS-500 Portable Reader slips to Summer
Ahh, the site of burning man-pelts in the park, a sharp increase in aimlessness along 42nd street, and the volatilization of sidewalk excretions exhumed by the subway heat below... Spring in New York and and the unmistakable sign that Sony's PRS-500 Portable Reader is set to launch. Er, or so we were thought until we took another peep at the SonyStyle site which now features a "late Summer 2006" availability for the 6-inch, E Ink reader. Ah well, by then we may have lost our Reader jones after spending the summer in the Engadget Hamptons' hideaway listening to interns whisper verse from ancient texts.
