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Originally Posted by Donnageddon
I certainly agree with your first paragraph, but am very curious a bout your second paragraph. Do you have some intel to support
This may be true, but I haven't read that referenced before.
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It's an educated guess based on one assumption and the data at hand: Sony isn't completely incompetent.
The 300/600/900 line was put into development quite awhile ago, and they had to lock down the hardware design a ways back to get it out in time for the holidays. I'd wager that the 600 and 900 were locked down at about the same time, and the extra software work and agreements for the 3G connectivity is what held up the 900 and prevented them from ramping up production and launching sooner.
So this means that for touch technology, Sony is going for something that can be used in the 6-7" range.
Wacom tech has already been vetted as usable on EPDs by iRex, so why not use it? It cannot respond to finger touch, something that the Sony UI is built around (you can do pretty much anything without the stylus). And I'd wager Sony is probably right here, a UI that is friendly to the user who doesn't want to get out a fiddly bit of plastic to navigate is one that is friendly to both types of people.
Capacitive tech has been shown to be finger friendly, so why not that? Well, a couple of reasons: It is like the finger version of the Wacom tech. It doesn't respond to most stylus designs meaning that some operations on an e-reader that are easier with a stylus (highlighting, scribbling) aren't guaranteed to work well. Look at the iPhone and the lengths it goes to, in order to offer certain functionality that would have been absurdly easy with a stylus. Some of that trickery isn't possible on EPD screens that can ship in devices right now. Now, there are stylus designs appearing that seem to work, but it's a bit up in the air how well they work, and how bulky they need to be, and I don't believe Sony had the time to fully investigate this before the hardware design was locked down. We're just now seeing capacitive screens show up in demos at CES, which I think is a good hint that backs this idea up.
That just leaves resistive, that Sony uses. It responds to touch from both a stylus and a finger, so it side-steps the issues of touch interactions on an EPD display, and doesn't require that you must use the fiddly piece of plastic. It let's you reduce the number of buttons on the device to a bare minimum of standard options that you don't want to clutter up the screen with. It just has a drawback: it affects screen clarity in low-light situations.