Plastic Logic’s giant touchscreen ebook reader makes Amazon’s Kindle look like ancient Egyptian technology, and the Barnes & Noble digital bookstore closes its serious content gap. Too bad though they’re using AT&T’s 3G network for over-the-air downloads.
Rumors about Barnes & Noble’s plans to develop an eReader have been confirmed in a company statement that launches a new e-Bookstore and outlines a partnership with Plastic Logic to develop an eReader for an early 2010 launch.
When I got up this morning, I threw my Kindle in my bag’s padded corduroy laptop sleeve like I always do. A few hours later, I pulled it out and it looked like this. If only its display was flexible.
Plastic Logic’s device is big, over 10 inches across the screen and 7mm thin. It’s touchscreen driven. What’s surprising is that they’ll have a store, 3G/WiFi and are coming out in Jan 2010.
We’ve been following Plastic Logic’s potential Kindle-killing e-reader device this week, and the guys over at TGDaily are adding to the intrigue with video of it. Speaking with a company rep, they found out that the device is less than 7mm thin and charges/connects to PCs with a miniUSB connector.
Here is what the clunky Amazon Kindle should have been since the beginning: a simple, ultra-sleek full-page 8.5-inch by 11-inch electronic book and newspaper reader with a flexible plastic touchscreen, Wi-Fi connectivity, and the ability to read regular Office documents without conversion of any kind. As we said yesterday, Plastic Logic showed it at the Demo Fall 08 conference in San Diego. Seeing it up close and on its side makes me want to have one. Badly.
Forget namby-pamby flickering e-ink displays: if Plastic Logic’s upcoming electronic paper tech is any good it might actually be the way of the future for newspapers. Due to be unveiled today, Plastic Logic’s unnamed device is the size of a sheet of copier paper, about two and half times the screen real-estate of Amazon’s Kindle, and is actually aimed at a business environment. But “newspapers is what everyone asks for” says Plastic Logic’s CEO: and this makes great sense since the size of the screen would give it a more “authentic” newspapery feel. The plastic-screened gizmo weighs 57 grams more than the Kindle, and yet is one third its thickness (as you can see from the image—it’s on the left.) We’ll have to see how capable the device is when it’s revealed… and, more importantly, find out how much it costs. Update: some more data has surfaced.
