Details of Sony’s new line of ebook readers are starting to roll in. Sony unveiled 3 new ereaders on September 1st, all upgrades of the current Sony Touch, Pocket, and Daily Editions.
The big news about these new Sony Readers is that they all have touchscreens and all use the new Pearl displays from E Ink that have much better contrast.
The touchscreens don’t have an added layer over the top of the display, so these new models won’t have the shiny, glare-prone screen that the previous models had. They work with both fingers and a stylus.
The disappointing news is that the new Sony Touch and Pocket Editions don’t have any wireless connectivity, only the Daily Edition will have WiFi and 3G, along with a basic web browser.
The price point for these new readers really hasn’t changed from the previous models. The new Sony Pocket sells for $179, the Touch for $229, and the Daily Edition for $299. They are now listed on the Sony Style website.
The new Sony Touch and Pocket are available starting today, and the new Daily Edition will be released in November.
Sony PRS-350 (Pocket Edition)
- Display: 5-inch E Ink Pearl touchscreen with 800 x 600 resolution and 16 levels of gray scale.
- Battery Life: 10,000 pages.
- Dimensions: 5 3/4 x 4 1/8 x 11/32.
- Weight: 5.47 oz.
- Memory: 2GB internal.
- Formats: Adobe ePub and PDF, BBeB, TXT, RTF, JPEG, PNG, GIF, BMP
- Comes in Silver and Pink.
- 2 English dictionaries, 10 translation dictionaries.
- 6 font sizes.
- Note-taking capabilities.
- Sells for $179 from Sony.
Sony PRS-650 (Touch Edition)
- Display: 6-inch E Ink Pearl touchscreen with 800 x 600 resolution and 16 levels of gray scale.
- Battery Life: 14 days.
- Dimensions: 6 5/8 x 4 3/4 x 13/32.
- Weight: 7.58 oz.
- Memory: 2GB, plus SD card slot and Pro Duo card slot.
- Formats: Adobe ePub and PDF, BBeB, TXT, RTF, JPEG, PNG, GIF, BMP, MP3, AAC.
- Built-in audio player, headphone jack.
- Comes in Black and Red.
- 2 English dictionaries, 10 translation dictionaries.
- 6 font sizes.
- Note-taking capabilities.
- Sells for $229 from Sony.
Sony PRS-950 (Daily Edition)
- Display: 7-inch E Ink Pearl touchscreen with 16 levels of gray scale.
- Battery Life: 14 days with wireless on, 27 with it off.
- Dimensions: ?.
- Weight: 8.99 ounces.
- Memory: 2GB, plus SD card slot and Pro Duo card slot.
- Built-in WiFi and free 3G.
- New web browser (WiFI only).
- Formats: Adobe ePub and PDF, BBeB, TXT, RTF, JPEG, PNG, GIF, BMP, MP3, AAC.
- Built-in audio player, headphone jack.
- Comes in Silver.
- Note-taking capabilities.
- Releases in November for $299.
Source: Sony
Re:
> Formats: Adobe ePub and PDF…
What is “Adobe ePub”? (A potentially confusing neologism?)
I think I know what PDF and EPUB (http://www.idpf.org/specs.htm) are.
The “Adobe” qualifier implies that “Adobe ePub” is a format owned or developed by Adobe.
The Sony website indicates that their new readers support “DRM Text : ePub (Adobe DRM protected)” and “Unsecured Text : ePub”. By “Adobe ePub”, are you referring to EPUB protected by Adobe DRM?
Could you please clarify?
First off, the topic of ePub is a very confusing subject. There are at least 4 different kinds of ePub (I wouldn’t be surprised if there are more lurking around the bushes).
1. DRM-free ePub. These are unencrypted files that can be viewed on just about any device—phone, ereader, computer—with ebook reading software. Any device that supports another form of ePub will display DRM-free ePubs.
2. Adobe ePub. This is the most widely used DRM encrypted format. Virtually every ereader but the Kindle supports this format. With the exception of Amazon and Apple, all the major ebook stores sell Adobe ePub and PDF ebooks. This is also the format used for most library ebooks.
3. Apple’s ePub. Apple has their own proprietary DRM for the ebooks purchased from their iBookstore, making them useless on any device but an iPad, iPhone, and iPod.
4. B&N’s ePub. Barnes and Noble use Adobe ePub, but to make things confusing they use their own DRM scheme that ties the buyers credit card number to an ebook. Thus making B&N’s ebooks worthless on anything not running B&N’s software app or a B&N supported device—Nook, Pandigital Novel, iRex DR-800.
Is there any information about improvements of the Sony Readers in regards to CSS support?
I’m especially interested in the missing RTL support from the current available Sony Readers.
No official information just yet on new firmware, but some of the videos are showing full justification, so it looks promising.