I haven't paid much attention to the e-reader scene since the iLiad was a shipping product, but back then I remember it was a selling point of the various zero-power displays that the computer/controller could completely power down, waking up only to service the "page flip" interrupt, and power down again.
Battery life was sometimes measured in months, or in thousands of page turns rather than a unit of time at all.
Are there still some that work this way, or are they all running background tasks and keeping wifi awake and doing other silliness?
Things I care about
:
- Huge screen. 8" minimum, 10+ ideal.
- Longest possible battery life. Truly zero power while idle.
- Reading PDFs without reformatting/reflowing text.
- Reading offline Wikipedia and other ZIM files.
- SD or MicroSD expansion.
- Wifi would be cool, as long as it consumes no power when turned off.
Things I do not care about
:
- Apps, app stores, online ebook stores, or other ecosystems.
- Note-taking, word processing, or any input besides search.
- Stylus or touch input.
- Cellular data of any kind.
- Audio.
- Backlight, frontlight, sidelight, do-the-hokey-pokey-light.
- Price.
Of course all those things are fine if they happen to be included, as long as they don't detract from the main goals.
If possible, I'd like to support someone whose out-of-the-box software experience gives me the things I want, without having to jerk around with bootloader hacks and custom firmware and downgrading to a specific version or whatever other godawful pains people put up with just to get reasonable functionality. I'd like this to be a tool, not a project.
I'm totally fine using an older device -- replacing batteries is well within my skill set -- I'm just trying to avoid needing the JTAG skills.
Does such a device exist?
Thanks in advance for your insight and recommendations! I'm aware that this might be a bit off the beaten path...