The activity level in the e-book world has picked up frenetically since the Kindle landed from Amazon. New e-book readers are getting announced right and left, and even bookselling giant Barnes & Noble is getting its feet wet. It is exciting that big players are taking e-books seriously, which is a good thing for those of us who like them. Sony recently announced a smaller version of their own e-book reader, the PRS-300, that will have a 5-inch screen to provide a more portable solution over their larger models. I believe that a 5-inch e-book reader is a perfect size, one that can provide a good reading experience while retaining a highly portable form. I should know as I have been using a 5-inch e-book reader for over a year.
My little e-book reader is old school, but it shows perfectly well how good a 5-inch screen can serve for e-book readers. It displays enough of the page to provide a good reading experience that approximates that gotten from a dead tree book. It is also small enough that it can easily be carried around- far easier than carrying a real book.
I have read countless e-books on phones, I don’t have a problem with small screens. I have read e-books on a BlackBerry, iPhone and even the Palm Pre. Using a phone for an e-book reader is convenient because the phone is always with me. As much as I enjoy reading books on the phone, the slightly larger screen HTC Advantage (pictured above) is even better. It displays more of the page than the phone and is highly mobile. I find myself coming back to the Advantage with the 5-inch screen over and over.
The Advantage is a great e-book reader but there are improvements that can be made, and this is something the new readers could address. The 5-inch reader needs to be very thin and light. The Advantage is not heavy by any means, but it is still too thick. I often leave it at home and fall back on reading on the phone because the Advantage is just a tad too clunky to carry.
Pictures I have seen of the new Sony 5-inch reader are exciting, as they show a reader that it super thin and light. I can easily see myself dropping it in my shirt pocket when I head out the door. That may not work if OEMs put big bezels and giant controls on the little readers, something I hope they do not do. They may have to though, as they are e-Ink readers which generally means no touch screen. That leaves the need for other types of controls for reading, and those usually add more size to the reader.
The perfect 5-inch reader for me would be a thin and light device that is all touch screen. Make the device as small as possible so it’s as portable as can be. I don’t need fancy controls nor keyboards. The touch screen can handle all of those duties. I don’t need any connectivity other than Wi-Fi either, no 3G for me. I don’t mind grabbing content via Wi-Fi when it’s available and being offline the rest of the time. I’m willing to sacrifice that to keep the device as small and cheap as possible.
I’m on the fence about e-Ink. I like my books to appear with black text on crisp white pages, and so far I haven’t seen e-Ink able to provide that. Most displays I’ve seen have dark gray text on light gray backgrounds and it’s not enjoyable for long reading sessions, at least for me. That screen flashing on page turns with e-Ink bugs me, too. I would be happy with a traditional screen, or better yet OLED, to provide a super crisp display. I understand that e-Ink is easier on battery life, but if I can go all day with a good display, I don’t mind charging the reader every night. Color displays would be better than e-Ink anyway.



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