The Digital Reader

Bookeen’s newest ebook reader went through the FCC last week, and I have to say that this is an odd looking beast. All the docs were left visible for this 6″ e-reader, and that means we get to look inside.

AS you can see below, this is a cluttered design when compared to the K4, Kobo Touch, or pretty much anything that came out of Freescale’s design computers. That’s probably because the guts of this e-reader were designed by an engineer, not a computer program.

I don’t see an internal card slot, and the photos don’t really show enough detail to tell us what chips it’s using. But it’s still a fascinating device. Look at the size of the battery. Clearly Bookeen planned for a higher capacity battery but went with a smaller one that offers less runtime. I’m betting that they swapped the battery because they found they didn’t want the added weight. Now, battery life is probably decent, so it doesn’t matter much, but I’d have preferred the larger battery.

But the really interesting part of this design is the honking big spot on the board where there is no chip. I would really like to know what was supposed to go there. It could be the CPU, but I don’t think Bookeen could send a nonfunctional unit to be tested for Wifi. that doesn’t seem possible.

Any clue what that’s supposed to be?

• bookeen cybook odyssey external
• bookeen cybook odyssey guts

FCC