Samsung has announced its E6 e-Book reader in U.S., almost two months after it was first showcased at the 2010 CES – along with its bigger brother, the E101. Although the E101 has not been offically announced though.
Samsung has signed a partnership deal with Barnes and Noble E-bookstore to offer the Samsung owners a large section of titles in the EPUB, and PDF e-book format. The E6 looks and feels like the Amazon Kindle and even Barnes and Noble’s Nook. It is interesting to see Barnes and Noble tying up with Samsung to offer content for the E6 which competes with it’s own Nook.
The Samsung E6 does have allot of interesting features. It has a very unusual slider form factor – probably a first for any e-Book reader on the planet. It has a 6-inch e-Ink display with a very crisp 600×800 resolution. Easily readable both indoors and outdoors, it also happens to be quite compact. The E6 comes with 2GB of internal memory, which should be sufficient for storing lots of data. It also has a SD card slot, allowing you to put in a chip up to 16 GB.
The E6 has internet connectivity with Wi-Fi (802.11 b/g) and Bluetooth 2.0 and can also act as a wireless music player
if you have lots of free memory and a pair of Bluetooth headphones that you can wirelessly connect using Bluetooth. There is a headphone jack as well as built in speakers for audio books or music. The speakers can also be used to listen to Samsung’s text to speech ability in which the reader actually reads out content for you. This is a great feature for people who are visually impaired and find that other e-readers do not read books out loud to you. This could very well be a large selling component.
The E6 comes with an electromagnetic resonance (EMR) stylus pen. This gives the user the freedom to add annotations and “writing” on the e-Book screen.
Samsung is yet to reveal the price if the E6 and it is largely expected to be priced nominally compared to its competitors. The gadget will be available in the US market this April or May 2010 with a price of $299.
Make sure to subscribe to our new magazine named “the Good E-Reader Magazine” We cover major news on E-Readers and Slate/Tablet PC’s! There is always tons of news on this and if you dig our blog, you will be over the moon with our new magazine! Check it out! Also for the latest E-Reader news visit our blog daily.
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.
