End of Sony consumer readers confirmed

[DuckieTigger]

Originally Posted by rcentros

Not the OP, but I don't like front-lit readers because they are hard on my eyes. Almost as bad as back-lit tablets and smartphones for me. I was kind of hoping Sony would continue making a non front-lit reader.

Other than Kindles that leave the light on all the time, don't the others have the option to turn it off? Nobody said you had to use it. I see it on the road almost every day - some cars may have builtin turn signals, but their drivers don't use them.

[Ripplinger]

I know that with the Kobo Glo you can completely shut the light off. Not just down to a lower level, it has an on/off button. I'm pretty certain the Kobo Aura and Aura HD are the same way, a button to completely turn off the light. I also can turn the light down to a minimal amount, so it's much easier on my eyes than trying to read from any backlit screen such as a tablet or a phone.

[mr_nihilism]

I can confirm the above post. I have/had all of Kobo's readers and those with a light can be turned completely off. Just my two cents worth, but I just couldn't go back to a non-lit reader.

[Salgueiros]

Maybe it is time for me to go back to paper books completely. I can't see any of the present ebook readers as being close to being as good, well designed and reliable as the Sony.

I think i will try to get an extra T3 for backup, and when that fails, paperbooks.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Salgueiros

Maybe it is time for me to go back to paper books completely. I can't see any of the present ebook readers as being close to being as good, well designed and reliable as the Sony.

Which others have you used? I've had a number of Sony devices over the years (PRS-500, 505, 600, 350, and T1) and have found them to be very much on a par with other mainstream reading devices. Certainly nothing exceptional about them.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by DuckieTigger

Other than Kindles that leave the light on all the time, don't the others have the option to turn it off? Nobody said you had to use it. I see it on the road almost every day - some cars may have builtin turn signals, but their drivers don't use them.

You can turn the Kindle's light off too, with the Front Light Master extension. (Which it seems you inspired with a previous version .)

Also, I don't get what the problem is -- isn't the KPW light supposed to go sown so low that it cannot be discerned as light, so the only real reason to disable it is for battery purposes?

[harriska2]

I don't know. Our sony 650 is built like a tank. It has a metal type of construction. It has buttons. Nothing out there is built like that. Although I personally love the KPW2, I can see it breaking pretty easily.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by harriska2

I don't know. Our sony 650 is built like a tank. It has a metal type of construction. It has buttons. Nothing out there is built like that. Although I personally love the KPW2, I can see it breaking pretty easily.

The high-density plastic that most modern readers are made from is better at absorbing impact than metal is, because it's more elastic. Look at the bumper (fender) of any modern car - it's plastic, not metal, because it does the job better.

Look at the Kindle forum here at MR. Do you see any significant number of reports of broken PWs?

[DuckieTigger]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

You can turn the Kindle's light off too, with the Front Light Master extension. (Which it seems you inspired with a previous version .)

Also, I don't get what the problem is -- isn't the KPW light supposed to go sown so low that it cannot be discerned as light, so the only real reason to disable it is for battery purposes?

Yes I know that it can be turned off, but not easily. I even remember that I wrote the first toggle for easy access through KUAL. I am not developing or use any jailbroken features for the PW any more. I am quite happy to use my PW only for reading now. It is great to hear that my extension inspired a new and better version that is up to date with extra features.

To normal people the reason to turn it off may be battery life, but I never believed that to matter much on the lowest setting. I also don't believe that the lowest setting is too bright to read in pitch black darkness. Others do believe those two things though, and that is the reason I wrote the extension. Maybe it is selfish, but I don't like to spend my spare time developing things that don't benefit or enhance my reading experience.

Both my PW1 are at latest firmware, and other than the lost usealtfonts I don't miss anything. I am not even sure if they are still jailbroken after the update or not, and I don't care.

[danskmacabre]

One of the first dedicated ereaders I saw was a Sony.

It was what convinced me to get an ereader in the first place, although I waited a while and got a Kobo ereader, as it was a lot cheaper.

The Sony one I saw looked very nice though, I don't know what model it was.

[Tarana]

I have a little nostalgia for the sony even though I never owned one. I wanted to buy one, but at the time, medical bills made it impossible to save enough money. I just continued to make due with audiobooks. Then, I latched onto the Nook Simple touch and the Kindle keyboard. I still think Sony has a superior organization system for ebooks and maybe now that they are out of the market, either Amazon or B&N will latch onto it.

[AnotherCat]

Originally Posted by HarryT

The high-density plastic that most modern readers are made from is better at absorbing impact than metal is, because it's more elastic. Look at the bumper (fender) of any modern car - it's plastic, not metal, because it does the job better.

Look at the Kindle forum here at MR. Do you see any significant number of reports of broken PWs?

Just to add to that-

The plastic readers are also typically considerably lighter as well, so there is less kinetic energy to be dissipated in the reader when it hits the ground.

In the case of the Sonys the 650 is roughly 30% heavier than the plastic cased Tx range of readers; so approximately 30% less energy to be dissipated in the reader on impact.

[danskmacabre]

Regarding the robustness of Ereaders.

For every ereader I've bought, I've immediately got a robust case for it as well.
I would never have an ereader without a decent cover/case for it, as I'll inevitably drop it at some stage, so this is an essential purchase for me.

I do the same for mobile phones.

[Kaitou Ace]

A shame, but no big surprise.

I've had every Sony reader from the PRS500 through the T1. I even had the awful 700 and 600 readers, though both of those went back to the store within two weeks.

Sony learned the wrong lesson from their experiment, it wasn't that people don't want frontlights, it's that they don't want a nearly unreadable reader in exchange for a bad frontlight. But apparently Sony decided it was a matter of honor not to return to a technology that they had tried before, especially if others had made it better.

I had the Kobo Glo, and would've gladly returned to Sony for the T3 if they had only put a light in it. It was the one feature I wouldn't give up, much as I liked the Sony interface vs the Glo one.

However I am currently quite pleased with my Kobo Aura, and while it is sad to see the originator of the market (and the manufacturer of many devices that I've owned and enjoyed) leave, they dug their own grave here.

[AnotherCat]

Originally Posted by Kaitou Ace

...while it is sad to see the originator of the market (and the manufacturer of many devices that I've owned and enjoyed) leave, they dug their own grave here.

The above and the views of some others are along the lines that Sony had to get out of E Ink readers through bungling their development.

My view is completely different in that rather than digging "their own grave" with respect to E Ink readers, they are in fact resurrecting themselves. And that about time they did. The first visual clue of this was with the T2 which is essentially the same as the T1 plus or minus a few gizmos but no innovation.

As far as I know Sony is the only large global electronic manufacture to have produced or persevered with dedicated readers and I suspect in the case of the others they came to realise early on that the market was just too small, and thus too distracting to the wider business, to be worthwhile.

With the arrival of tablets, especially now the small tablets of typical reader size, and large format smart phones the dedicated reader market is becoming a niche one. In fact, over the last 12 months in my own local area displays of dedicated readers have almost disappeared out of the stores, they being displaced by long line ups of small tablets of close to similar price, and in nearby displays the larger more expensive smartphones. People don't want to carry multiple devices around with them and for reading they like the availability of colour (not just for illustrations and text formatting but in order to set up background colour and saturation according to preference and ambient conditions).

Samsung have now brought out emissive AMOLED screened small (and larger) tablets and, as with top end phones, these Samsung emissive displays will likely turn up in other manufacturer's tablets. That puts to bed the real or imagined issues people claim with "flicker" (I suspect most issues of problems are more related to users reading with inappropriate light level, contrast and colour settings of the display) and daylight readability. AMOLED has been common on many top end phones for around 4 or 5 years (Samsung Galaxy and Nokia smart phones, for example) and is well regarded; it has a large colour palette (larger than LCD) and does grey scale excellently (far better than E Ink).

While probably hurried along by the other rationalisations going on in their empire, I suspect Sony have realised these things and those are the reasons for little recent development and exiting the to become increasingly niche E Ink reader market. It is something they are doing too late and that may be the only criticism of them. The market's writing was on the wall back when T1s were still on the shelves.

Last time I made mention of such things some E Ink fans got a little angry; perhaps such reactions are just another symptom of how niche the market is becoming.