According to some paperwork that showed up on the FCC website this week, Kobo has a couple of new ebook readers in the works that will likely be getting released in the near future.
The information at the FCC indicates the possibility of two new Kobo ereaders, one with a 6-inch screen and another with a 7.8-inch screen.
That’s the most interesting thing we’ve heard regarding Kobo all year, as things have been unusually quiet for the past six months.
The possibility of a 7.8-inch Kobo is really intriguing considering the fact that there haven’t been any 7.8-inch E Ink ereaders before.
There are a few 8-inch ereaders but nothing with a 7.8-inch E Ink screen.
The jump up from 6-inches to 6.8-inches really isn’t very much, but a 7.8-inch ereader would be significantly different.
It seems kind of odd that E Ink would go through the trouble of making a special size that’s less than a quarter inch smaller than what they already make, but it wouldn’t be the first time that Kobo got the jump on a new screen. After all, they were the first to release a 6.8-inch ebook reader with the Kobo Aura HD back in 2013.
Perhaps the new device will come with a new kind of E Ink screen tech to go along with the unique size.
Either way we have next to no information to go off of at this point, as the FCC paperwork isn’t particularly revealing, so we’ll have to wait until Kobo makes an official announcement to know more.
If Kobo releasing a new larger-screen ereader doesn’t finally get Amazon to release a larger Kindle nothing will. Hopefully the competition will spur them to do the same.
via: Liliputing
Woo hoo! I’m cautiously excited.
Me too!
WOOOO! Awesome KOBO!!!!!!!
Great! I find 6-inch screens a little little… XD
Seriously, they weight a few grams and I think most people can bear a device heavier
Hopefully they push Amazon off the fence!
Let’s see if Kobo can do this right…
I don’t really like using any of my ereaders that are smaller than my 6.8 inch Aura, but often wish it was a tad bigger. 7.8 would be great! Thanks for sharing early clues, giving us hope for the future! (I just don’t get why 6-inch has remained the standard for so long.)
8 inch Kindle Oasis please!
Selling price? Will it cost more or less than an Amazon Oasis?
Weight? Can it be used one-handed at all?
PDF’s? Some folks would like a better PDF experience using e-Ink
I bet it will definitely be cheaper than the Kindle Oasis but I also doubt Kobo will do much if anything to improve their below average PDF support since most of their business revolves ebooks.
I think that’s really the job of the software on the PC, not the device. I mean I can think of reading books converted to Kobo’s formats but I won’t be reading any larger papers with such a small screen. The 13″ and larger devices seem a lot better for PDFs.
Bring it on! I can’t wait to see what the new tech and prices are.
My wishlist for this is:
– i.MX7 dual 1 GHz
– 1GB RAM
– fast 16GB eMMC / fast replaceable SD card inside
– sd card slot with sdxc support
– headphone jack
– good solid consruction. The inner stuff in Aura HD was ok, but the plastic cover is crap.
– 802.11n and USB2 are still ok
The software side could be even more hacker friendly. Could have a VNC client and a decent browser.
Forgot the resolution, the bigger model should be really 1920×1080 or something close to that.
I’d rather not see 1920×1080 as the aspect ratio wouldn’t be as well suited for reading purposes.
Preferably it would be the same 2048×1536 resolution as the iPad Mini Retina, but I wouldn’t have any issues with a 1600×1200 screen either.
I’d also like to see an external speaker, but that might be too much to ask.
Agreed, but I don’t think the above poster meant that resolution literally. 4:3 is ideal for book reading in my opinion. At least 300 ppi would be great.
Amazon must have known about this and it either fell outside of their price-point for their Oasis (or it might have fit right-in) or outside of their manufacturing time-line with desire to get something to market as it had been some time since a refresh and wanted to pre-empt competition in some fashion. So they pushed the Oasis to market, hoping to sell enough to amortize certain costs. If they spring for a 7.8″ option, later they will again be able to squeeze others out of the market by lowering their margins.
I still suspect that expected certain other parts parts partners to have certain parts of the chain ready, like the MX7, which would have helped with the form-factor, by pushing battery life well up, etc.
We’ll see. I’ll probably grab this and then wait with baited breath to see what the juggernaut counters with.
A little more excitement for a rather sedate little niche part of the tech world. Hah.
Nice! I hope the 7.8 model maintains a 300 ppi or higher.
I believe this will be a game changer!
hi
i was checking ebay to buy kobo aura h2o , and i have seen something very odd … there were ones that costed just about 120$ and there were ones that costed 190$-200$ … i was very confused , until i knew that 120$ ones have this written in the discription :
Rakuten Kobo e-book store, only PDF books that are sold in the Rakuten Kobo e-book store will be supported
so i wanted to know if it is possible to sideload and read Pdfs using koreader .
thanks .
It looks like the cheap ones are the imported Japanese version. I doubt there’s any reason they’d block sideloaded PDFs from it specifically.
I admit it I want one, this may be my treat for taking my certification exams. Bigger screen, oh yeah I am very intrested
I’ve been trying to contact kobo to pester them for an 8″ reader but they’re as hard to contact as batman.
i’ve actually bought a samsung tablet just for reading books!
go kobo! do it.