[Quilathus]

For the record, whilst I'm impartial to this news, I must respond to, in my opinion, some misinformation.

Originally Posted by screwballl

When it comes to eink, there is very little difference between the resolutions when it comes to most ebooks since the font and size are always static. Now for more detailed information such as the map they are showing on there, the higher resolution may help, but really, who is going to be expecting to map anything on their ereader?

I don't think you quite understand why higher resolution is better. As a previous poster mentioned, the higher the resolution means less reliance on anti-aliasing. Higher amounts of anti-aliasing over small text reduces perceived contrast as the lighter pixels that prevent "jagged" edges appear to make the text lighter. This is because of the device's inability to actually render pixels at 100% black since there's just not enough pixels to draw text before you reach an edge with smaller text. Due to this, you mostly get lighter rendered text.
By increasing the pixel density, a more defined dark zone can be rendered on the screen by the device before it reaches the edge of a character, allowing for increased perceived contrast, even if the contrast ratio of the device hasn't actually been changed.
Furthermore, eReading devices aren't totally static. Ever heard of font size changing? Designing a GUI to exploit the increased number of pixels to deliver smoother output? Unlike running a desktop OS, increasing resolution on a smaller device doesn't make everything smaller, it just allows developers to exploit more pixels, allowing them to either fit more on the screen if they want to, or to allow smoother rendering of whatever they want to render.

Originally Posted by screwballl

Slightly higher resolution, same storage as the Kindle3 (2GB), minor speed bump from the processor (600-800MHz versus Kindles 533MHz)... the only added benefit is the SD card slot.

At 213.3 ppi, that's 28% more pixels, basically for every 4 pixels on a 800x600, you get 5 pixels for the same distance. That's pretty significant.
Minor speed increase? You're joking right? MHz != performance. Unlike the Kindle's Freescale i.MX35 processor, which is built on ARM1136J, the iRiver story has a Cortex A8, the same processor architecture found in an iPhone/iPad etc. If we are to compare raw performance ratings in DMIPS/MHz (I know that's bad but...), we see that ARM1136J only does, say (optimistic) ~1.25 DMIPS/MHz versus the 2.0 DMIPS/MHz by the Cortex. So it's not a minor performance increase but a major one, since doing 60% more instructions per cycle, that means even at a puny 600 MHz, it'll still be 80% faster than the i.MX35 (at 533 MHz) theoretically.
(I still don't understand why the Kindle 3 doesn't have an SD slot...)

Originally Posted by screwballl

In this case when the screen is so small PLUS the fact it is eink and not typical pixels, a minor resolution bump like this will barely be noticeable without an increase in refresh rates. Since eink does not have a refresh rate, higher resolution on a small screen has less of an impact. Considering these will primarily be used for ebooks, a minor resolution bump is even less useful without additional software capabilities such as web browsing, map display or PDF display.

Do you even understand what refresh rate means ? I have no idea how you came to associate refresh rate with the ability to notice an increase in resolution.
I will agree that e-ink does not have traditional pixels physically, but the electrodes are actually arranged in a matrix representative of the screen's resolution. Thus there are actually REAL addressable electrodes behind the e-ink capsule layer that actually causes the e-ink to change from black to white. More of these = smaller area of e-ink capsules affected by each electrode, allowing for increased resolution.
Lastly, in contrast to a computer screen, eReaders tend to be held quite close to the reader, meaning character edge-pixels can be noticed if they're big enough (I certainly do notice them if close enough). Furthermore, unlike computer monitors which have RGB (or similar) subpixels, e-Ink doesn't have that luxury meaning that anti-aliasing must consume a full pixel, rather than sub-pixel rendering only having to cover part of a pixel. Thus on the monitor I'm typing on, even at only 95.8 ppi - with 3 subpixels per pixel, it actually has a perceived horizontal resolution of 287.3 ppi when rendering text. A big difference.