The Digital Reader

The Best News and Info on Ebooks and eReaders

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Entries Tagged as 'hardware news'

$99 iDolpad to Get Android 4.0 in May

February 3rd, 2012 · hardware news

Last week I brought you news of the iDolPad, a $99 Android tablet. I still haven’t put my hands on it, but the specs and demo video posted by the builder showed a decent looking tablet with a 7″ screen. Today that cheap tablet just got a lot better.

Idolian just announced that they were working on a new firmware for the iDolPad. Round about May they are planning to update this tablet to Android 4.0. They also plan to release 4.0 updates for their other tablets, too.

[Read more →]

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Kindle Touch Now Available Internationally

February 3rd, 2012 · hardware news

I bet you haven’t noticed, but Amazon started shipping the Kindle Touch outside the US some time in the past few days. They’re keeping it very low key at the moment, but my competition discovered that the product page for the Kindle Touch Wifi has been updated.

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Kindle Fire Now Available as a Refurb – $180

February 2nd, 2012 · Amazon, hardware news

And it took just under 3 months for it to happen, too.

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New Asus eeePad Transformer Leaked in China

February 2nd, 2012 · hardware news

A Chinese gadget blog has turned up photos of what might be the next Asus eeePad Transformer, the TF300T. The first eeePad was the TF101, and the Transformer Prime is the TF201, so this new model number is probably legit.

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Apple Supplier Now Suing a Blog Over Leaked iPad 3 Parts

February 1st, 2012 · hardware news

Last summer I was among the many blogs that posted about a cable that was rumored to come from the (still not yet released) new iPad. Yes, that was a little nutty, but like any story involving Apple,  it gets nuttier.

It looks like the Chinese blog that posted the original photo is being sued for stealing the part. It’s not clear who is suing the blog or why (language difficulties), but it looks like the company who supplied the part may have panicked over the leak.They probably don’t want Apple to think they leaked it on purpose.

I’m not sure what they hope to accomplish; the leak happened 6 months ago. Heck, suing over the leak is more damaging than the leak itself; it confirms the accuracy of the original story.

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Amazon Saw a 5-Fold Increase in UK Ebook Sales

February 1st, 2012 · ebook sales, ebookstore news, hardware news

Yesterday Amazon released their year end financial statements, and the news was both good (sales were up) and bad (profits were down). But one notable absence from  the news report was ny mention of ebook sales. Yes, Amazon said that they sold million so of  Kindles, but how many ebooks?

Well, The Bookseller followed up on this and they have some stats for the UK Kindle Store, and the news is mixed.

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New Mirasol eReader Launched in Taiwan

January 30th, 2012 · hardware news, Kyobo eReader

Qualcomm and their new partner Koobe have just announced the new Jin Yong Reader. Like the Kyobo eReader and the Shanda Bambook Sunflower, it’s based on Qualcomm’s Mirasol screen.

In fact, I’d say that it’s based on exactly the same hardware as my Kyobo eReader. They’re not just similar; both Kyobo and Koobe are using one of Qualcomm’s reference designs, and running their own reading app on top of the Qualcomm provided Android 2.3 Gingerbread OS.

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Running an XO-1.75 on a Solar Panel

January 29th, 2012 · hardware news, video

When the XO-3 tblet debuted a few weeks back, one of its selling points was that it could run off of a small 10W solar panel. In fact, if I hadn’t been distracted by CES 2012, I would have written about this post, in which they prove the solar panel concept with an XO-1.75 laptop.

Now, the XO-1.75 isn’t the XO-3, but it does share a lot of details. The over all design of the motherboards is the same, so the power consumption should be similar. But you don’t have to take my word for it; check out the following video. It was shot in Cambridge, MA, in early January.

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New Firmware out for the Sony Reader Wifi

January 29th, 2012 · hardware news

It’s been just over 3 months since the Sony Reader Wifi shipped, and today it got an update. This is the second update for this ereader, and thanks to my experiences last time I don’t plan to install this one.

Here’s the list of improvements:

Improvements over system software version 1.0.03.11140:
•Resolves an issue where using a very short page flick to turn a page may accidentally select words and start the dictionary lookup [Read more →]

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€200 Spark Tablet Coming Soon – Runs Linux

January 29th, 2012 · hardware news

In a world that is iPad, Android, or nothing, one group of developers have gone for the third option. Meet the Spark tablet.

This 7″ tablet is the brain child the Plasma Active team, and it’s going to be the first commercial tablet ship with Plasma Active interface running on top of an an open source Linux-based OS.

[Read more →]

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