Tolino Shine 4 announced

[kyôdai]

Hey there,

Yesterday the german Tolino Alliance announced a new ebook reader, the Tolino Shine 4. It is available now at various german Retailers for €139.

Since 2017 Tolino devices are manufactured by Kobo and are based on Kobo devices. The Tolino Shine 4 is the equivalent to the Kobo Clara 2E.

Here you can find out more about the Shine 4:

-> https://mytolino.com/products/tolino-shine-4/

Display -- 6-inch E Ink Carta 1200 display, high resolution (300 ppi, 1072 x 1448 pixels, 16 grayscale levels),portrait and landscape mode
Touchscreen -- Capacitive high-performance touchscreen with multitouch functionality, extremely quick and precise
Dimensions -- Approx. 112,1 x 158,8 x 8,3 mm (may vary slightly due to manufacturing process)
Weight -- 172 g
Light -- Integrated lighting with smartLight system (manual or automatic adjustment of color temperature depending on the time of day)
Water protection -- Water-repellent IPX8 coating (protected for up to 60 minutes in up to 2 m of fresh water)
Battery -- Lithium polymer battery, 1.500 mAh
Battery capacity -- Several days
Processor -- 1,8 GHz AllWinner B300 Quad Core Processor
RAM -- 1 GB
Storage (internal) -- 16 GB (out of which approximately 14 GB are available for your content, equals more than 12,000 eBooks)
tolino cloud -- 25 GB additional online storage in Germany, Austria and Switzerland
Supported eBook formats -- EPUB, PDF, TXT, compatible with eBooks from public lending libraries, e.g. Onleihe
Connectivity -- WLAN 802.11 ac/b/g/n (2,4 and 5 GHz), free use of Deutsche Telekom AG HotSpots in Germany (after login with a bookseller)
Ports -- USB-C
Features -- Hall sensor allows you to use “intelligent” protection cases, free software updates, customizable sleep screen, special mode for left-handers, enlarged mode, pre-installed eBook
System languages -- German, English, Spanish, French, Italian, Dutch
What’s in the box -- tolino shine 4 eReader, USB-C cable, warranty, user manual (pre-installed eBook), accessories available seperately

[NiLuJe]

Originally Posted by kyôdai

Processor -- 1,8 GHz AllWinner B300 Quad Core Processor

Then it's not the same board as a Clara 2E *at all* (E60K20, FWIW).

This is the SoC used on the Elipsa & Sage; the Clara 2E still uses an i.MX 6SLL.

[kyôdai]

Yeah, there might be small differences.

The Tolino Vision 6 (equivalent to the Kobo Libra 2) also uses the new quad-core SoC instead. As a matter of fact, all current Tolino devices are now on the new chip.

I wish, the Shine 4 would also use the older SoC though. At least that would take care of some of those battery issues... Did you notice, how under "Battery capacity" they only speak of just "several days" now and not "weeks" anymore?

Maybe Kobo does not want to develop the (android based) Tolino firmware for two seperate SoCs.

[NiLuJe]

Ironically, I'd almost assume this might get *better* battery life than on Nickel (NTX has a longer experience dealing with sunxi on Android than on plain Linux).

[Cactus Chef]

Someone remind me what Tolino's business angle is, again? Does Kobo just not have a presence in Germany such that it made more sense to let another company rebrand their hardware and flash another OS onto it?

[DNSB]

Been napping for the last few years?

Kobo is now the hardware end of the Tolino alliance.

See Kobo becomes new technology partner at the tolino alliance or Kobo acquires Tolino e-reading platform or do a search for the many articles about it.

[Cactus Chef]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Been napping for the last few years?

Kobo is now the hardware end of the Tolino alliance.

See Kobo becomes new technology partner at the tolino alliance or Kobo acquires Tolino e-reading platform or do a search for the many articles about it.

Fair enough, what I wasn't clear on is why every other country just operates on Kobo except Germany. Might have my answer in this paragraph:

For both tolino and Kobo customers, the change of partner does not alter anything. They will still be customers of their tolino bookstore and be able to use the same services as before. The established tolino brand remains one of the leading eReading brands for the German-speaking region. And the customers will benefit from the usual free access to the hotspots, the tolino app and tolino cloud.

I guess the thought was that this would be easier than trying to migrate all of the Tolino stuff into the Kobo ecosystem for just one region?

[kyôdai]

Originally Posted by Cactus Chef

Someone remind me what Tolino's business angle is, again? Does Kobo just not have a presence in Germany such that it made more sense to let another company rebrand their hardware and flash another OS onto it?

Before their partnership with Kobo, Tolino managed to become the second largest e-reader brand in Germany. At one point they even sold more ebooks (45% market share in 2014) than Amazon (39% market share in 2014).

Tolino and Amazon combined made up more than 80% of the market, which gives you an idea of how "big" Kobo, Pocketbook, Sony (etc.) were in Germany...

-> https://www.lesen.net/ebook-news/tol...t-haben-16328/

Back then Kobo and Tolino had very different "business angles".
Tolino was directly competing with Amazon, mirroring their portfolio and aggressive pricing. (Which is one of the reasons for their success.)

Kobo on the other hand tried to avoid any direct confrontation with Amazon. They had no competitor for the Kindle Paperwhite (the Glo HD was quickly discontinued) and no direct competitor for the Voyage. Instead Kobo was seeking new pastures in bigger screens or special features (waterproofing, etc.).

I believe, Kobo's line-up of e-readers today was heavily influenced by their partnership with Tolino.

Since Tolino wanted to continue to directly compete with Amazon, they needed something like the Clara HD as a competitor for the Paperwhite. And something like the Libra H2O as an equivalent to the Oasis.

I still maintain,that without Tolino the Clara HD would not have existed at all and the Libra H2O would probably not have had such a similar design as the Oasis.

So yeah, while Tolino only rebrands Kobo devices these days, I think you can definitely see the influence they had on Kobo.