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The one thing I've yet to see in any E-reader is acceptable battery life. The same can be said for tablets. All of the manufacturers are focused on making slimmer and lighter gadgets -- which means you get stuck with a tablet that has eight hours of battery life.... or an e-reader that claims to have the best battery life at two-months (cool!) -- but is based on only 1/2 hour a day of use (NOT even remotely cool!).
I still can't believe that one -- calling thirty hours "two months based on 1/2 hour a day" is about the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard -- It has just a bit over one day of battery life, not two damn months. That's like saying a car that gets 30 mpg on the highway gets 300 mpg based on being towed 90% of the time.
If someone can make an e-reader that could do two simple things, I would be delighted: 1) support epub, and 2) have a REAL two month battery life (at least), i.e: 2x30x24=1,440 hours.
And really, why should this be so damned impossible? Consider first that an e-paper display doesn't consume any power when not being updated -- a simple reader based around a microcontroller and an SD card with physical page turn buttons wouldn't need to consume power until a button is pressed, then it would update the display and shut off again.
Then there's the issue of battery size and weight: the Kobo Mini weighs less than five ounces and is 0.4" thick. You're average hard cover book weighs about two pounds. If the mini had to be bulked up to a couple inches thick and a pound or two in weight to provide the kind of battery life that I want, that's perfectly fine with me.
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