Today I turned on my iriver Story HD and it detected a firmware update. The update is version number 1.19. The previous firmware version was 1.17 (so what happened to 1.18?).

I’ve gone through all the features of the Story HD and haven’t noticed any changes with this new firmware, and there’s no changelog to be found anywhere. It must be a minor update that works behind the scenes, fixing bugs. It seems like the Story HD might be loading and reacting a little faster but it’s hard to tell for certain.

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The iriver Story HD is the first 6-inch ebook reader to use a XGA 1024 x 768 resolution screen, and it’s also the first ereader to come with the Google ebookstore onboard.

But is that enough to make the Story HD a true competitor against the likes of the Kindle, Nook, Kobo, and Sony Readers?

Here’s the link to the iriver story HD review for the answer. As usual the review includes an in-depth video walk-though and several pictures. The video also briefly compares the Story HD with the Kindle 3 and new Nook Touch.

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A new ebook reader is coming on July 17th, the iriver Story HD. It will be available exclusively through Target stores and on Target.com for a suggested retail price of $139.

The iriver Story HD is the first ebook reader to incorporate the Google eBookstore. With it users can browse, purchase, and download ebooks over WiFi. The Google eBookstore launched this past December and is designed to be open to all publishers, retailers, and manufacturers. It provides access to a wide library of new ebooks and over 3 million free ebooks in EPUB and PDF formats.

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The UK is starting to get their fair share of budget ereaders. WHSmith has the iRiver Story WiFi on sale for £99.99, marked down from £199, and Waterstones has the iRiver Touchscreen eReader for £99.99 as well, marked down from £149.99.

For comparisons sake, the Kobo WiFi is also selling for £99 from WHSmith and the Kindle WiFi costs £111 at Amazon UK.

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The iRiver Story HD brings much needed innovation to the dedicated ebook reader industry with its 6″ XGA 1024 x 768 resolution display.

Not only is it the first ereader with a high resolution display (most 6″ ereaders are 800 x 600), it uses new screen technology developed by LG that actually has a good shot at taking on E Ink, a company that pretty much holds a monopoly on the epaper industry.

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CES 2011 is just around the corner (January 6th-9th) and as usual looks to be the hotspot for companies showing off new ereaders and tablets, among many other electronics and gizmos.

According to reports, iRiver intends to reveal the iRiver Story HD, the first 6″ epaper ereader to use a high definition display with a resolution of 1024 x 768 instead of the more typical 800 x 600.

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Back in August iRiver released their first touchscreen ebook reader exclusively in Korea called the iRiver Cover Story.

Fast-forward a couple of months and now the iRiver touchscreen ereader is selling from Waterstones in the UK for a competitive £149, about £50 less than the new Sony Touch.

The description page over at Waterstones lacks any substantial information about the device, but the iRiver website has the low-down on the new iRiver Touchscreen eReader. Apparently, the one selling from Waterstones looks to be the non-WiFi model. So here are the details . . .

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While some ebook reader companies are calling it quits in light of the heated competition and price wars, iRiver (it’s supposed to be a lowercase R, but I’m a rebel) continues to advance their ereader product line.

Just recently iRiver announced the new iRiver Cover Story with WiFi that connects directly to the WHSmith ebook store for downloading ebooks.

And now, according to a Chinese iRiver fan site, there’s a new story on the horizon that features a completely new design and a touchscreen, the iRiver Cover Story.

An official list of specs is not yet available, and the above link refers to a page that is mostly images so Google Translate doesn’t help (here’s a translated page I found that reveals a little more info, though poorly translated), but so far it looks to have a 6-inch E Ink touchscreen for both fingers and a stylus, 9000 page battery life, G-sensor, 2GB of internal storage with an SD card slot for cards up to 32GB, and supports EPUB, PDF, FB2, DJVU, DOC, DOCX, TXT, PPT, PPTX, XLS, XLSX, HWP, ZIP and CBZ (JPG, BMP, PNG, GIF) for comics, and supports MP3, OGG, and WMA audio files.

The iRiver Cover Story measures 126mm x 162.8mm x 9.5mm and weighs 230 grams. And sounds like it may have some kind of magnetic cover that comes with it, but it’s hard to tell for sure from the translation.

According to Engadget, the iRiver Cover Story is going to be for the Korean market only, but if it works out well I don’t see why it wouldn’t soon reach wider markets, especially considering the fact that it lists English as one of the supported languages, along with 14 others.

iRiver Cover Story at IFA

Filed under: News | Tags: iriver story, touch edition | 1 Comment »

Just happened to check this morning and the new iRiver Story with WiFi is up for pre-order on WHSmith in the UK, with a release date of July 28th, 2010.

When the new WiFi Story was first announced last week, the price was listed at £250, and a lot of folks grumbled about the £100 extra for the WiFi model over the original.

Good news. iRiver listened and dropped the price down to £199, a much more competitive price point in the UK. That’s about the same price as the Sony Touch and a Cybook Opus, and £80 less than the WiFi-equipped BeBook Neo.

The big news with the iRiver Story is of course the WiFi that will connect it to the WHSmith ebook store for downloading ebooks wirelessly. Other than that, the specs are pretty similar to the old model, with the exception of a slight weight difference and the new model supports 16 shades of gray instead of 8.

Here’s the tech specs for the iRiver Story WiFi:

• 6” E-Ink Display with 800×600 pixels and 16 shades of gray.
• Dimensions: 203mm x 127mm x 9mm.
• Weight: 291 grams.
• 2GB internal memory, SD card slot for up to 32GB.
• Menu Language Support: 16 Languages (Korea/English/Russian/German/French/Spanish/Italian/Japanese/Polish/Turkish/Swedish/Czech/Dutch/Chinese(Simplified,Tradition), Romainan).
• Battery Life: 9000 pages; 20 hours auido playback; 5 hours recording.
• Text Formats Supported: Adobe PDF and EPUB, TXT, PDF, DOC, PPT, XLS, and HWP.
• Comic Viewer: Zip (JPEG, BMP & PNG).
• Audio Formats: MP3, WMA, and OGG.
• Only Compatible with Windows XP/Vista/7.

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Buried at the bottom of pages and pages of news articles about the launch of the Borders ebook store, there’s one single article with a press release that reveals an interesting story.

As it turns out, there’s a new iRiver Story with WiFi coming to the UK “soon”. It will sell from WHSmith and will connect directly to WHSmith’s ebook store for downloading ebooks wirelessly.

It is expected to sell for £250, a hefty increase from the current WiFi-less model that sells for £149 from Play.com with free delivery.

£100 extra for WiFi?

Maybe the Story has some other new features too. For instance, the screen for the new one says it supports 16 shades of gray, instead of 8 with the earlier model. Perhaps they will be using a new Pearl screen from E Ink like the new Kindle DX. It doesn’t mention anything cool like that in the press release, though.

The iRiver Story ebook reader has been on the market since Fall 2009, mostly available in Asia and parts of Europe, with minimum exposure in the US.

The device can the following text formats: Adobe EPUB and PDF, TXT, FB2, and DJVU, as well as Microsoft Excel, Powerpoint, and Word documents. The iRiver Story WiFi has a comic book viewer for JPG, GIF, BMP, and PNG files stored in compressed CBZ (ZIP) format.

Like the Kindle 2‘s evil EPUB supporting twin brother, the Story has mini QWERTY keyboard for writing notes, searching words, and all things typing. Other features include a built-in speaker, headphone jack, and microphone.

Visit our dedicated iRiver Story page for more information, photos, and a video about the iRiver Story.

Via: Hexus

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