Pocketbook announced today that it is going to be releasing a new e-reader in July 2013 with Color e-Ink and Front-Light technology. The Color is being produced by a second generation e-Ink Triton, which is the same sort of tech that the Ectaco Jetbook Color employed.
The new PocketBook reader will especially appeal to those who like reading magazines in PDF, as well as to those who deal with tables and graphs. It will be much easier to turn over magazine spreads, analyze charts, and deal with any technical literature. The traditional PocketBook’s omnivorous nature for any book format allows you to open virtually any document.
The device itself will be around 8 inches and features a capacitive touchscreen. The resolution is 600×800 pixels and will display over 4096 colors. Battery life will run you over a full month of use. It will use the same type of Front-Light technology found in the Amazon Kindle Paperwhite, Kobo Glo, and Nook Simple Touch with Glowlight. This allows you to basically read in the dark and this unit will be the first large screen reader with night light technology. Not much is known in terms of processor, RAM, and other semantics. In the coming months we will see a clearer picture of what this device brings to the table.
I am very excited about the second generation of e-Ink Triton. Overall, e-reader technology has been fairly stagnant in the last calendar year. We have seen a slew of devices utilizing e-Ink Pearl, such as the Kindle Paperwhite, Sony PRS-T2, Kobo Glo, and many others. The first generation of the tech was fairly under-performing, but this was directly attributed to low-end hardware specs found in the Jetbook Color. It will be interesting to see what the Pocketbook Color can do in the real world. I don’t expect it to have ANY availability in North America, due to the company pulling out of the market. Likely, it will be relegated to eastern Europe, Germany, and other countries around there.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
