3 New Sony Readers announced today, apps coming this fall

[SkyDream]

Originally Posted by Orn8one

I've read posts from page 1-9 and read all the links but can't find any mention of when these readers are coming to UK. I'd love to know especially if the Daily will be here in time for someone to give it to me for Christmas . . .

I've heard that the Daily (PRS-950) won't be sold outside US.
The same old problem as with the PRS-900.

[Dave Berk]

Originally Posted by maxbookworm

Thanks for checking it out. You're right. That is a *major* drawback. Almost deal-breaking, which makes me sad because I would *love* to have that non-reflective Pearl screen.

That is incorrect. You can change between text view and cover view.

Originally Posted by SkyDream

I've heard that the Daily (PRS-950) won't be sold outside US.
The same old problem as with the PRS-900.

There's always B&H.

[maxbookworm]

Originally Posted by Dave Berk

That is incorrect. You can change between text view and cover view.

Oh, good!

[Salgueiros]

As already said in another thread the technology used for the touchscreen is neither capacitive or resistive. Seems like they use a mesh of IV rays over the screen to detect the presence and movement of fingers, though completely eliminating the need for an extra layer and having no effect on visual quality.

From the website of Neonode:

"zForce™ is the name of Neonode’s proprietary patented touch screen technology.

A selection of advantages with zForce:
Low cost
Low power
100% transparent
Fast capturing of movements
Multi-touch finger support
Support for extended temperature range
No calibration needed
Durable protection (glass)

zForceTM uses a small frame around the display with LEDs and photoreceptors on the opposites sides hidden behind a infrared-transparent bezel.

A controller sequentially pulses the LEDs to create a grid of infrared light beams across the display.

A touch obstructs one or more of the beams which identifies the X and Y coordinates which also give area information. Interpolation combined with analogue signal processing give multiple touch readings and high speed gesture feedback."

You can see a diagram of the system on here:

http://www.neonode.com/

If this is the case, wow, very ingenious!

[ManosHandsOfFate]

Originally Posted by makani

Here is a review page that has some good photos of the new readers.
I would say the screen quality is very good.

http://www.techradar.com/news/portab...review-713812#

This worries me:

"Sony says the screens are highly responsive yet we didn't find this when trying to select a book or other item on the screen."

[Georgiegirl2012]

Originally Posted by Orn8one

I've read posts from page 1-9 and read all the links but can't find any mention of when these readers are coming to UK. I'd love to know especially if the Daily will be here in time for someone to give it to me for Christmas . . .

I read 17/9 (waterstones site i think) - although I too would like to see the Daily Reader in the UK
Talking to one of the sales assistants in Waterstones this afternoon and she has been to a meeting about them, so they have to be imminent, and the older models are all on "sell-through" or something similar meaning Sony are trying to get rid of them.

[simplyparticular]

Originally Posted by ManosHandsOfFate

This worries me:

"Sony says the screens are highly responsive yet we didn't find this when trying to select a book or other item on the screen."

Yeah, I saw that. I wonder how they had problems selecting items, but page turns registered correctly.

Strange, and something I'd probably want to see in a video or in person. Based on my experience with the Nook's touchswipe, touchscreens have quirks, that once you adjust to them, work fine.

[kjk]

Originally Posted by ManosHandsOfFate

This worries me:

"Sony says the screens are highly responsive yet we didn't find this when trying to select a book or other item on the screen."

IR touchscreens are a bit different in how they "react" compared to capacitive (or resistive) touchscreens...part of their reaction may be due to that unfamiliarity.

But, I've only seen IR touch used on bigger screens for simple touch pad/POS applications, not for portable devices.

edit: @simplyparticular..exactly!

[ThomasC]

Sony are now finally supporting Australia re book sales, but not wifi/3g. Pretty silly imho since Amazon/Kindle does.

[AlbertaCowboy]

Originally Posted by ManosHandsOfFate

This worries me:

"Sony says the screens are highly responsive yet we didn't find this when trying to select a book or other item on the screen."

I thought this was odd, especially when one reads the next sentence: "However, moving between pages does only require a lightweight touch – we wonder if maybe a little too lightweight". The page turn has a hairtrigger, yet the screen is non responsive. Perhaps the demonstrator didn't calibrate the touchscreen for himself. I know that proper calibration made a HUGE difference on my mom's 600.

[Kolenka]

Originally Posted by vivaldirules

That is good, if it's true. But I would really like to hear directly from someone at Sony who will answer:

1. Specifically which Sony readers now support full justification in epubs?
2. Are there firmware updates available for that for the older models (e.g., the 505)?
3. Is justification (left, right, full, none) selectable by the user or is it set by the creator of the particular epub or is there is only one setting for all epubs on the Sony?
4. Why has it taken so damn long?

Okay, I'll drop that last question so long as the answers to the other three are decent.

1. Should be all of the new models, they run roughly the same firmware now. (unlike the 300 which used a tweaked 505 firmware, and the 600 which used v2 of the 700's firmware, and the 900 which was v2 of the 600 firmware)
2. No.
3. It seems to be full by default, but the CSS in the ePub can override it.
4. The last set of models Sony launched was last year. The last model was the 900 which included a lot of the changes we see in the new models across the line. It makes sense that Sony would wait for the new hardware to be ready and the glare problem to be "solved" before pushing out new models with completely updated firmware.

[HiWire]

It sounds like you'll have to keep the sides of your screen (where dirt and dust tends to accumulate) relatively clean for the IR sensors.

I'm not really impressed with the specs of the new models, but I can understand Sony's reluctance to commit huge resources to a product that is probably still losing large amounts of money for them.

Regarding the screen glare, user interface, and text rendering questions - I can't wait to test drive one of these in the store.

[Lilly]

Originally Posted by SkyDream

I've heard that the Daily (PRS-950) won't be sold outside US.
The same old problem as with the PRS-900.

I knew that would be the case once they added 3G.

[FizzyWater]

Originally Posted by maxbookworm

Thanks for checking it out. You're right. That is a *major* drawback. Almost deal-breaking, which makes me sad because I would *love* to have that non-reflective Pearl screen.

I see that a couple people have posted there's a way to switch over. I couldn't find it (I did look), but I got there 10 minutes before closing, so I was in a bit of a rush. I commented to the sales clerk who was hovering over me that I didn't like the cover view, and she didn't offer me a different view. But hey, I didn't know my 600 could do it!

I'm with you...that would make it a deal-breaker for me. So I'm really hoping the other two posters are correct and the TOC view can be changed and I just missed it. I tried to find it in the user guide yesterday before I posted, but I didn't read ALL the pages, so maybe I missed it there, too.

They really were sweet looking.

[Kolenka]

Originally Posted by FizzyWater

I'm with you...that would make it a deal-breaker for me. So I'm really hoping the other two posters are correct and the TOC view can be changed and I just missed it. I tried to find it in the user guide yesterday before I posted, but I didn't read ALL the pages, so maybe I missed it there, too.

They really were sweet looking.

From Page 34 of the 650 User Guide:

Originally Posted by Sony

"[View:] Changes the appearance of the list."

This is similar to how the PRS-900 does it, which I assume is similar to how the 600 does it. The 900 changed the order of items in the Options menu quite a bit from the 600 though, and I wouldn't be surprised if they tweaked it again with the new models.