Still 6 inches. I'm not sure why ebook readers standardized on that size, it feels too small at least to me.
Finally bought one last year and ended up choosing the Kobo H20 partly because of that - it's 6.8" which is not bad, but I suspect the sweet spot would probably be somewhere between 7 and 7.5.
Edit: for people looking for big readers (for technical books and such, where 6" is quite useless), the ones I'm aware of are the 8" Bookeen Cybook Ocean and the inkBOOK 8 (the later was still vaporware when I looked into it, not sure if it's available now).
Jacket pockets - for those of us in countries where the temperature goes low enough. I spend most of the year wearing some form of clothing that has a pocket that comfortably carries a Kindle - I don't have to specifically shop for the size, it just fits.
That means I always have my Kindle on me when I find myself sitting on public transport, when I arrive somewhere early or through lunch. It becomes the alternative to social media on your phone - and broadens your mind.
That doesn't explain why the screen is 6 inches. The bezel on kindles (Paperwhites and below) are quite large and you could imagine a same sized device having a larger screen quite easily.
Well, yeah, stuff like the Sony Z3 phone is mostly screen. Not an E reader but it's still a good example of a device where you make the most of the physical size.
I'm an e-reader fanatic, having bought a total of six for myself and friends/family over the years. I have 3 Kindles - one third gen for reading novels in one hand (I don't have particularly large hands but I can palm the 6" while using my thumb to move to the next page by clenching my hand), one PaperWhite for night reading, and one Kindle DX from ~5 years ago that I still use for PDF's.
Believe it or not there's a huge scene for people who love the 8-9" form-factor. A NIB DX runs 500ish on ebay. I was waiting for this release for ages, but I see no reason to buy it. It looks like you're paying an extra $100 just to get back the side-buttons the Kindle fanatics demanded (it feels way more natural to press a button than make a slide motion, to the point where you don't even realize you're pressing the button after a few pages of immersive reading, unlike the slide action which breaks the continuity -- the same reason why I keep my 3rd gen around).
For $100 more, the Onyx BOOX N96[1] is definitely the best buy out there right now for that larger form factor. You get the same Paperwhite tech, the ability to jot notes down with a stylus, and a significantly bigger screen. I don't have one but I've heard nothing but good things about support from Onyx and let's be honest making an e-reader isn't the most complicated thing out there so odds are you won't need much tech support (you can buy a DX 9.7" replacement screen for ~65 and drive it with a uC almost trivially easily).
I had a Windows Tablet PC back in like 2005, and really liked it. I waited for years for a e-ink tablet with a wacom-style input and good note taking software. I stopped waiting at some point. Is that BOOX any good for note taking? Is that something that for example college students could use to take class notes?
This does look pretty interesting. Could maybe be a bit larger. And their website less shiny and more info.
I like that they are offering (by invitation only) a ios and Android app -- so much of a tool like that is the OS and interface, if you can give people a simulated version on a device they already have, that's a pretty good share-ware like onboarding experience.
Was in the same boat myself. Tried lots of different styluses, and was hoping that a new DX size kindle would come out. Recently I have been really happy with an iPad Pro and pencil since it's basically the size of a pad of paper! A Sony Ereader with wink was just released but it was basically the same price as the iPad Pro. :/
I think given those prices, I'll just get a wacom tablet for my macbook and use xournal. Does the ipad pro even have a decent eco system for note taking apps?
There's a few decent apps that I've enjoyed using. My favorite two are Notes Plus, and Notability. If anything the ecosystem is better than the Mac desktop. There's room to improve as neither Notes+ or Notability fully take advantage of the size and power of the iPad pro. Still, the shape of the tablet form makes it great for note taking -- even if it's more oriented toward student / business notes.
> it feels way more natural to press a button than make a slide motion, to the point where you don't even realize you're pressing the button after a few pages of immersive reading, unlike the slide action which breaks the continuity
You probably know this already, but on my PW1, you only need to tap the right hand side of the screen to go forward a page, and similarly, you tap the left hand side to go back a page.
Sadly, it feels to me that half of the side taps I make end up pulling up the dictionary on a word.
The 3g side buttons were not prone to "misclicks" :(
Not reliable enough in my experience. And you need to either hold the Kindle exclusively with your right hand, or move your hand more than with corner buttons.
Do you have any examples the DX screen being driven by a microcontroller? I looked into this a while back and it seemed a lot more complex than just hooking up an Arduino or something due to the screen's voltage requirements. The projects I saw involved making a custom driver PCB.
I mean, someone in the 'maker community' has a high probability of having some difficulty, but my 12 year old cousin could build the driver on protoboard, no issues, and it's not like he's worked through 2nd order diff non-homogeneous eq's ;). That's the only 'strange' thing about it is the voltages as you mentioned (well that and the somewhat rare flat-flex ribbon used). It needs a jellybean boost converter to get up to the +/- 25V @ a few tens of mA. This guy[1] did it for what looks to be under 10 bucks in parts. Some LT standard (not as standard as the LM317 or 7805, but close) will switch both rails no sweat, all day, then use 2 standard LDOs will get get your -25 up to -15 and regulate your +25 down to +15. (I don't like his value choices for those caps around U4 and U5, but the rest of the design is so well done and I'd imagine he used SPICE and tested every node, so I'm going to just defer to his design, since I'm not an EE haha). Everything else are jellybeans you'll have lying around (except maybe those inductors).
The only thing you have to watch out for is quiescent current, not only for the obvious reasons (leakage == bad), but also because even a minimal amount of voltage drop 'across the FET' will fade out the image, so its double bad. (Each pixel with the characteristics of an N channel MOSFET.) Acting as the source on the FET -- continuously driving "on" for each "frame render" (it's just latched in from a shift register), and the horizontal pixels corresponds to the vertical pixels (which is just a shift register pushing data for each render).
If you have issues with that guy's build, http://spritesmods.com/?art=einkdisplay this dude consistently has some of the best documented hardware hacks ever. Those two sources in aggregate and a Saturday should be all you need for a one off.
Yes, I'd like a larger screen option too. Tech books often have the preformatted code sections wrapping which is horrible and only sometimes eliminated in landscape.
I'm still hoping more manufactures will release bigger devices, but I assume there are still cost issues with larg(er) e-ink displays. I'd love to have something big enough to work for graphic novels and books with illustrations/diagrams. Even if only black and white.
I suppose if none are released, I'll just have to bite the bullet and consolidate on something like the Microsoft Surface Pro 4, or a Lenovo Yoga. Still not convinced that even the new high-dpi screens will work for ~12-14 hour reading sessions, though.
For those interested, there's one day left on the IndieGoGo - 13.3" e-reader running Android for ~700USD. Sadly, it's a little too steep for me right now :-/
Personal theory from watching Nook shoppers, ebook readers are for book readers. I'm not being glib, they are for people who read paperback books. That is the market.
I've seldom seen a person go from Nook to the magazine displays. The same is true from Nook to larger format book sections like bookmaker or tech books.
The remaining market probably, and this is just my opinion from watching tech conversations, is to small to support with existing margins the cost of a larger form factor with the larger resolution screens. I haven't even seen a Kickstarter for such a device. The screens exist. The ability to get the other parts exist. The market for such a product does not, apparently.
Agreed. For reading (primarily) flowing text, I find the Kindle Paperwhite just about perfect. Really light to hold in one hand, great battery life, easy on the eyes.
If I'm reading a graphic novel or a technical book with illustrations, code, etc. I much prefer my full-size tablet--which I don't like as much for just reading.
The issue with the larger screen I suspect is that you're now competing with full-size tablets with a much more specialized device that that would probably be judged inferior to its smaller sibling by many people for plain reading. It feels like a very slim market.
ADDED: I actually forgot that there used to be a Kindle DX. Given that format doesn't exist any longer, I'm pretty sure that it didn't sell well.
I have Nook 9", it is perfect sized and even today good tablet. Since they had to do custom plug, if I forget to charge it, it will linger. It is slow but works well for reading.
Comics can be black and white - I grew up reading one called The Phantom decades ago printed in b&w, and more recently I read The Walking Dead comics that are b&w too.
Also, most manga is 90+% percent black and white, with many series having at most maybe one or two colored splash pages per issue, or the occasional promotional or plot climax issue that's all color.
There is basically a single supplier for eInk displays. If they thought they could do volume at a larger size, I bet they would do it. However the number of people who want large black & white e-readers is probably quite small.
I like to think they stick with the 6-inch size because it's roughly the same size as a mass-market paperback book, which everyone is used to holding and reading from, and they fit in just about any size bag.
My Kindle DX is one of the best device purchases I've ever made. I got mine for $299 right before it was phased out and still enjoy using it to disconnect from the digital world.
PDFs are especially great on it...you can enjoy the original fonts, design, and layout in the original (often larger) size.
EPUBs are the weakest because (1) they're not officially supported and (2) converting leads to huge fonts. There's probably a way to fix (2) but I haven't bothered as I find my phone a better medium to read EPUBs.
I've had one from amazon warehouse deals for a while (around $200 ~2 years ago too). Completely worth it for the screen size when working, studying and for fun. Wish they had a touch screen version and thin bezel.
I bought it specifically for reading pdf papers, and haven't been disappointed. Can't complain about the free 3g, and occasional browser use either if you flash it to 3.2.1 or higher from the kindle keyboard.
You can read for a lot of hours on a tablet, which is a lot better than Kindle epaper for the types of material you describe. There was a time when some sort of epaper/LCD convergence seemed to make a lot of sense. Today, though, while I prefer a small Kindle for flow of text, an LCD tablet really does win for formatted and graphical content. I still prefer paper for some situations but, given digital, there's really nothing wrong with tablets.
Same experience--PDF rendering was too slow even for a lot of linear reading. I remember once opening a statistical text (Springer has a lot of freely downloadable content if you're at a university). I think it was a Bayesian text with a plot showing model convergence. Because the graphic was a vector plot containing lots of line segments, the page would take several minutes to render.
I loved the screen though. I'd love to have a DX sized reader with even the processing power of a raspberry pi. Actually, I'd love something with a keyboard cover that let me do emacs in the sunshine, but that's an altogether different story.
I dread the day mine stops working. I'm overseas and when they first came out I wanted one, so paid a fortune to some place in Malaysia that bought them in bulk from the US, added a couple of hundred dollars and resold them. I've never regretted spending that much on it.
I have an ipad as well now, but I prefer reading fiction on the DX.
I'd actually prefer something smaller - I still use my ancient Sony PRS-350 just because it fits conveniently in a pocket. I suppose that size has too much competition from smartphones to be viable any more.
6" does seem an odd compromise, though. Too big to be convenient, too small to be nice.
For a counter-point, I find that 6 inches is too big. A phone screen allows much easier one-handing, and reduces eye-scan. Combine that with the fact that an AMOLED screen is much superior than anything backlit for night reading, and my ebook reader collects dust.
I'd love a 4ish inch ebook reader. My pet peeve with my Kindle is that it's not something I can take with me without carrying my bag. I'd love something I could stick in my back pocket or cargo pocket and read while I'm killing 5 minutes.
Right now, I tend to use my phone, but I don't enjoy reading off an LCD nearly as much as I do my eink Kindle.
The Kobo Mini [1] looks promising, but since it's discontinued you only seem to find them used on eBay.
From my experience, uploading a PDF file to your Kindle account destroys the presentation of the content as you would usually see it on Desktop clients, like Adobe Acrobat Reader. On desktop, every A4 page can be zoomed in an out. I wish it would be possible for Amazon's ereaders to display a page at full width and allow the display to scroll down, instead of reformatting the page. I /think/, I am not sure, that if you move a pdf file onto your ereader, you can achieve this. However, in this case, you lose your sync functionality.
There is a 13" Sony DPT-S1 reader that is made for technical documents. The only use case is reading somewhere outside for me, I would else prefer a tablet.
I have a Kindle DX. It's... big. Too big for typical usage like novel reading. Works better for things like PDFs or other things that need a bigger space, but not if I'm just sitting around reading some fiction.
Also, if it could be really cheap; say £7 or so. And rather than charging it you'd just get another copy of it once you'd read one. And when you were finished you could lend or give it to someone else. You could get second hand ones cheap, and there'd not be a central store of all the ones you'd read for a hostile government to data mine, and no company would be able to remove them from you, like, say you were in the middle of reading 1984 about a dystopian future where your every move was monitored by a dicatorship.
Finally bought one last year and ended up choosing the Kobo H20 partly because of that - it's 6.8" which is not bad, but I suspect the sweet spot would probably be somewhere between 7 and 7.5.
Edit: for people looking for big readers (for technical books and such, where 6" is quite useless), the ones I'm aware of are the 8" Bookeen Cybook Ocean and the inkBOOK 8 (the later was still vaporware when I looked into it, not sure if it's available now).