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Panasonic's Words Gear gets official launch and price
We've watched Panasonic's 5.6-inch Words Gear e-book / media player make the jump from early prototype to trade-show circuit. Now, it's gone official. Sure it lacks e-Ink and the associated long battery life, but there's something to be said for the ability to not only read books for 6-hours at a time off the lithium Ion battery, but also view MPEG-4 video and JPEGs on that 5.6-inch, 600x1024 display -- you get AAC audio to boot. Pretty limited codec support frankly, and too bad it only supports SD cards (up to 2GB) what with SDHC now pushing 8GB and 32GB on the horizon. Still, for just ¥41,790 (about $355) when loosed upon Japan on December 20th, you just gotzta take notice. [Via Impress]
Panasonic's Words Gear color e-book reader
Looks like Panasonic have taken a few steps closer to rejoining the ebook posse with the introduction of their 5.6-inch Words Gear reader. The touch-sensitive display brings a 1024x600 resolution and appears to be the same 5.6-inch full-color panel they were working on last year. The 105 × 18.5~28.4 × 152-mm / 325-gram Words Gear is capable of playing back a variety of SD-ePublish protected content off SD cards loaded with e-books, music, photographs, and video with a continuous e-book playback battery life of about 6 hours. No real details yet or pricing / ship date, but they'll certainly be limited to Japan whenever launched.Update: This just in from Engadget Japan: Words Gear has touch-sensitive navigation on the grip, not the display itself, and will cost ¥40,000 or about $340 when they hit the streets "later this year."
