Last week Bookeen uploaded four videos on YouTube showing off their new Cybook Odyssey ebook reader. It is the first device to use a new high speed E Ink display technology called HSIS that was developed by Bookeen.
The first video I posted a couple of weeks ago showing the Cybook Odyssey in action didn’t demonstrate very much in regards to the speed of the device.
This first video below shows how impressive the speed actually is with an animated boot sequence. What’s most impressive about the animation is that it runs smoothly without any trails or general funkiness. The Nook Touch is surprisingly fast with animation too, but the screen refresh can’t keep up, resulting in psychedelic craziness.
The other videos show some scrolling, and that looks pretty nifty too. It moves relatively smoothly and doesn’t have excessive black flashing.
I wish Bookeen would have uploaded a video showing the web browser. The Sony PRS-T1’s web browser is surprisingly fast; I wonder if the Cybook Odyssey can match it.
So you think they are doing pinch to zoom on an EPUB? That would be a first, no?
The Sony PRS-T1 can pinch-zoom on ePubs too. It’s just not very useful because you then have to scroll around and none of the onscreen features work.
It seems they are not really using speed in the correct spots. Sure an animated boot screen looks nice but is it useful?
I agree with Bob’s comment about the boot up sequence and it appears that animation is not being in places where it could add value. Where you need animation is with the pinch and zoom. Instead you’re getting a delay after you pinch so you have to pinch again to get to the size you want. The Sony PRS-T1 by comparison uses an abbreviated image that gets animated in real time so you can set the size productively.
I have the PRS-T1 and to me the Odyssey looks like nothing new. The T1 (and the Nook Simple Touch I guess) is also capable of such animations! And when animation is done, there is an additional screen refresh – like on the Odyssey.
I doubt that the Odyssey features any hardware optimisations. They rather just tweaked the display driver. And if this is true, the PRS-T1 can be tweaked as well.
Even B&N did some driver optimizations for the Nook with notable speed gain.
Is it possible to side-load the books I already have in my pc into the odyssey and the Kobo touch?
As long as they support the formats you want to sideload…