The Evolution of eInk

That’s not quite the right metaphor. E-ink devices are more like dSLR’s. High end devices optimized for the activity in question, marketed towards people who really care about the activity in question.

Point and shoot cameras were never meant for people who care about photography. They were marketed towards people who just wanted to take a picture now and then. Smartphone cameras are perfectly fine for that crowd, and so for that crowd there’s no utility in a second device in the form of a dedicated camera. But for photography enthusiasts (and pros), smartphones are a nice to have but can’t replace a dedicated camera with its high quality optics, larger sensor, manual controls, ability to shoot RAW, etc. The low end camera market vanished, but the high end market is doing fine.

Similarly, dedicated readers are for people who really care about reading. People that read two or three books a week. People who care about being able to read in all kinds of environments (like direct sunlight), and want to be able to do so for hours at a time, free of distractions and not worrying about burning through a battery’s charge. Tablets and phones simply aren’t suitable for this kind of intensive reading; the battery life is too short, the backlit screen causes eye strain, they’re unpleasant in dark rooms and unusable outdoors. Those trade offs are probably fine for casual readers, but not for serious ones.

As long as dedicated devices can offer real advantages to general purpose devices for the same task, there will always be a market for the dedicated devices.

Amazon and their customers want ebooks to be cheap, and proofreading costs money. All the things that happen between the manuscript and the book–no one wants to pay for that. Readers complain when the files they get are crap, but that’s what they’re willing to pay for.

I remember way back when I got my first e-reader… it was the Rocket eBook back in the late nineties. I was in high school and I was so thrilled about going to camp for the summer and being able to take 40 books with me! I think it weight about three pounds.

I have the Voyage now and love it. Despite also having an iPad, I read a lot on the Kindle–it’s easier not to get distracted.

They are standalone and live a long time on one charge.

They would still live long on one charge, as bluetooth is now low energy

Tie it to smartphone, and dead battery there makes it a useless piece of plastic.

Smartphones last a day on one charge and people charge nightly already. How large proportion of eInk users read books off the grid for >24 hours? And among that small group, how many won’t anyway bring a cheap battery pack to give the phone a charge on the go? You wouldn’t need to hold or use the phone while reading.

More advantages with dumb screen eInk devices:
1 You can switch eInk device and keep reading exactly where you were. Airports, lounges, hotels, etc can lend screens to guests so they won’t have to bring their own. Also useful for those who work with text both at office and at home.
2 If the dumb screen gets lost/stolen you still have the content and lessen the risk of corporate material getting in the wrong hands (if the device is designed to not cache content). Phones can be lost/stolen too, but have better security tools and remote location and wipe features.
3 UI and apps open to more designers, competition. Set an industry standard for the image input/touch data output and we’d quickly see cross-device cross-platforms frontends (think XBMC but for books/text).
4 from a corporate POV it is easier to only manage employee smartphones than both smartphones and smark eInk devices. Lower cost would be another plus for corporate. The Sony Digital Paper 13", the best non-dumb eInk device out there ATM, costs $1100.

Making an ebook reader dependent on a smart phone would kill the product stone dead, some people are capable of being away from their phones and the cpu power needed by the kindle is pretty negligible.

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I can’t speak for the Kindle, but I have a Kobo, and can’t say I like it more than a tablet. The screen broke twice within a year and a half. Also, it doesn’t work in the cold. Maybe the reason the screen stopped working was because of the cold, but I’ve never had another device stop working just because it got cold. The winter is when I use it the most due to taking public transit, and if it doesn’t work when it’s cold, it’s useless to me.

Anyone checked this out?

I’m sorry - I’m going to ask it…what is wrong with the library?

I have an e-reader but have gotten in the habit of getting my books from the library. I tend to like older classics that are easily found at the local library or easily shipped within days. While I wait (if I need to), I can always find something else to read. And I’m already going once a week for my kids. Actually it was my wife who is in a book club that got us back to the library. She reads about a book a week. I can’t imagine how much money we’ve saved by just getting them at the library. All it requires is a little advanced planning to order a book if it isn’t at your local branch.

Sure e-readers are lighter, save your page, etc. The cost savings for us just don’t outweigh the minor benefits.

Can you share any additional information about the covers you’ve tried? I haven’t gotten my Voyage yet (waiting for xmas) and I don’t want to open the origami cover if it’s really terrible - I’d rather just return it and get a different one.

I’m finding that I can check out electronic copies from my library that aren’t available in paper format. These days I tend to use both formats, depending on availability and the type of book. (I still much prefer paper for technical books.)

Fwiw, Kobo’s latest reader, the Aura HD, has the same new hi-res screen as the Kindle Voyager.

This might be interesting to those who are trying to avoid locking all their content into the Amazon walled garden, or who don’t want to reward Amazon’s publisher negotiating tactics or contract employee practices.

You can use Calibre plus deDRM plugins to move your prior Amazon purchases (may be illegal in your country) or copy your non-DRM content directly on to the device. It also integrates nicely with Pocket for delayed reading of web pages. And, though of course Kobo has its own walled garden, they do offer some books DRM-free (apparently determined by the publisher).

I’ve been a big fan of the E-Ink Kindles over the years, but as an app publisher, I’m getting a little tired of my customers purchasing on one platform (e.g. iPhone) and then being restricted from using their previous purchases on another (e.g. Kindle). So I’m trying to match my purchase dollars to my ideology, and encourage others to do likewise.

Gerda malaperis!
Are you learning esperanto @codinghorror?
That’s awesome :smile:

Sometimes people don’t have access to the best libraries depending on their country or state? Great if you’re in NYC but less fun living out in small town far away from the coast for example. I love libraries and I support them for reading but it’s not always the case.

I have a tablet and a separate reading app when I don’t want to deal w/carrying multiple books around for commutes. I like the idea of a e-reader (own a old Aluratek) but it’s always with the transferring and converting formats which drags on when I just want to read the book.

Considering that the screen is the biggest reason for dead battery in less than a day, tie the phone up with an eink reader and it has a better chance of lasting for more than a day. This does after all seem like a good idea to me.

I still think, that reader should have it’s own brain and storage.
Syncing reading position with/via the phone - sure. Syncing files on the reader - wow, I’d like for that to work, but use an open protocol, and not something proprietary.
But making it dependent on a smartphone…

I used to have a smartphone, but got tired of daily charging and went back to use old Nokia N70 as a primary phone, and I like it. Charging once in 3-4 days, and never bothering if your phone will die on you due to runaway app (and I had that more than once).

Intellectually, I’m very interested to see the evolution in this space. However, support for only proprietary ebook formats is a deal-breaker for me.

It is somewhere between asinine and criminal for an electronic book to be harder to give away or lend out than a regular book. Additionally I refuse to get myself in a situation where my whole “library” could become legally unreadable because a single company went out of business.

In short when I buy a book, I own it. If your reader can’t provide that, it fails.

While I’m pleased that more and more people are choosing e-ink devices, Kindle was NOT the first and IMO not the best. For an example, the newest Kindle’s more closely resemble one of the earliest e-ink readers, the Sony PRS-500, which came out at least a year before the original Kindle. You know, the one with that crazy keyboard idea.

Just like with iPhone/iPad, it seems that people don’t seem to realize that are predecessors to the Kindle that did many things that Kindle has taken to doing, or used as inspiration. Although the hardware has evolved a great deal, including with the competitors and over the predecessors, but that’s the nature of things.

If you make highlights and notes on your kindle then hopefully you’ll like https://www.clippings.io for organizing them. You can also export to Evernote, word, pdf etc.

Full disclosure - I run the site.

Cheers

Jim

So why do you only talk about the Kindle? There are so many other eReaders, this simply looks like a commercial for Amazon.

As for your local libraries and checking out eBooks it is increasingly possible, see http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/?nodeId=200747550

Not exactly the same…

  • Aura HD’s screen 265 dpi (6.8") at 1440 x 1080 resolution
  • Kindle Voyager scree 300 dpi (6") at 1440 x 1080 resolution

Only a function of size though, same resolution, 6 inches vs. 6.8 inches. The Kobo HD is waterproof though, which is nice…

It’s the one I am most familiar with and the one sold by one of the largest retailers in the US, one associated with books and reading since the company was founded. It’s the market leader.

Yes the official “origami” cover is terribad. Don’t get it!

Yeah that sounds correct. Most people are happy with the smartphone pictures, and to be fair, smartphone pics have gotten a ton better in the last 4 years. Still a ways to go, but I suspect the gap will close a bit more (it’s still a massive quality difference between a $500 smartphone and $500 dslr of course) over the next decade.

See the “send to Kindle” browser extension. Just find a page you want to read later, click the button, bam, delivered to Kindle for later reading.

Yeah the conversion matters. And for some very visual books, a PDF is still the best format, and read on a larger, color tablet with a very high resolution screen. Diagrams, complex layout, cartoons and illustrations, etc. eInk is still mostly about plain words, with a few typographical flourishes; the more graphical the book is, the less likely it’ll “fit” on an eInk device the size of a paperback. But to be fair books like this are usually larger format than paperbacks, too, so this fits.