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HarryHutton · 07-21-2015, 06:22 AM

E-Reader companies do regularly browse these forums, so I believe it's a great idea to discuss needs and ideas for new innovation.

A few points

1) E-Readers take a while to respond due to slow processors and RAM. The network card and touch tech is probably negligible in this respect, but this is a guess. E-Readers have been engineered for the use case of turning one page every 10-30 seconds, and thus aren't ideal for browsing.

2) E-ink readers really only have web browsers so users can connect to Wi-Fi (e.g. Cafe's generally have a sign-in screen that you need a browser for). I don't think they were intended for serious browsing, although there are plenty of people who have used them for that.

There could still be ways to read in a 'Discovery' sense as you describe (jumping between links and finding new content), but perhaps the web pages would have to be designed for an e-reader, incorporating page turns instead of scrolling. As an example, a few people have mentioned it would be cool to be able to read Wikipedia on an e-reader like a book, complete with hyperlinks.

As mentioned by others, an issue is there is no profit potential in pushing this innovation for the manufacturers, and e-readers aren't friendly for 3rd parties to launch apps upon, unlike tablets. Should this change in the future?

3) The most expensive component in an e-reader is generally the display. Most e-readers make no or little profit from hardware sales, and they rely on content sales to keep them afloat. This is known as a bait and hook business model.
If the device provides a better experience (e.g. better resolution, more responsive, waterproof, higher quality etc) then people enjoy using it more and buy more content. So improvements to the hardware are good for content sales, but I would agree that innovation has been quite conservative. In particular it is difficult to read non fiction books, reference or religious books as you have mentioned, as people tend to physically flick around rapidly whilst reading, where this is poor on e-readers.

4) E-Ink has a quoted max refresh speed of 120ms (10 times per second) although there are video examples of displays that exceed this. Refreshing rapidly does reduce the lifespan of the display, though I am unsure of how significant this is.

In conclusion e-readers have been designed to perform based on their use case, which for the vast majority of fiction readers is turning pages every few seconds, thus there has been no market pull for greater RAM or processing power.

However I would assume that innovation in the next few years will move towards faster and more responsive e-readers as they begin to address the challenge of flicking and non linear navigation in non-fiction reading. Web browsing may improve a bit at this point as a side effect, but I don't think it will be the focus of development, unlike tablets or PC's.

07-21-2015, 06:22 AM	#61
HarryHutton Connoisseur Posts: 53 Karma: 1580200 Join Date: May 2012 Location: Glasgow Device: Kobo H2O, Kindle Voyage, Samsung Note 10.1, Nook Simple Touch, M92	E-Reader companies do regularly browse these forums, so I believe it's a great idea to discuss needs and ideas for new innovation. A few points 1) E-Readers take a while to respond due to slow processors and RAM. The network card and touch tech is probably negligible in this respect, but this is a guess. E-Readers have been engineered for the use case of turning one page every 10-30 seconds, and thus aren't ideal for browsing. 2) E-ink readers really only have web browsers so users can connect to Wi-Fi (e.g. Cafe's generally have a sign-in screen that you need a browser for). I don't think they were intended for serious browsing, although there are plenty of people who have used them for that. There could still be ways to read in a 'Discovery' sense as you describe (jumping between links and finding new content), but perhaps the web pages would have to be designed for an e-reader, incorporating page turns instead of scrolling. As an example, a few people have mentioned it would be cool to be able to read Wikipedia on an e-reader like a book, complete with hyperlinks. As mentioned by others, an issue is there is no profit potential in pushing this innovation for the manufacturers, and e-readers aren't friendly for 3rd parties to launch apps upon, unlike tablets. Should this change in the future? 3) The most expensive component in an e-reader is generally the display. Most e-readers make no or little profit from hardware sales, and they rely on content sales to keep them afloat. This is known as a bait and hook business model. If the device provides a better experience (e.g. better resolution, more responsive, waterproof, higher quality etc) then people enjoy using it more and buy more content. So improvements to the hardware are good for content sales, but I would agree that innovation has been quite conservative. In particular it is difficult to read non fiction books, reference or religious books as you have mentioned, as people tend to physically flick around rapidly whilst reading, where this is poor on e-readers. 4) E-Ink has a quoted max refresh speed of 120ms (10 times per second) although there are video examples of displays that exceed this. Refreshing rapidly does reduce the lifespan of the display, though I am unsure of how significant this is. In conclusion e-readers have been designed to perform based on their use case, which for the vast majority of fiction readers is turning pages every few seconds, thus there has been no market pull for greater RAM or processing power. However I would assume that innovation in the next few years will move towards faster and more responsive e-readers as they begin to address the challenge of flicking and non linear navigation in non-fiction reading. Web browsing may improve a bit at this point as a side effect, but I don't think it will be the focus of development, unlike tablets or PC's.