Tired of –e-readers with little to no battery life, or scourging around for the proper USB cables in order to charge it up? Toshiba seeks to eliminate the need for power adapters and cables with the debut of the Biblio Leaf solar powered e-reader.
The Toshiba Biblio Leaf is a new 6 inch e-ink reader, with a resolution of 800×600 Pixels. It features a touch screen you can interact with, similar to the Sony PRS-650. It has 2 gigs of memory in order to store your eBooks, but if you fancy yourself a traveling librarian you can boost it up via an SD card. It has the ability surf the internet with WI-FI and 3G, currently you can pay in Japan $20.00 a month with TDDI. The Biblio Leaf SP02 is compatible with XMDF, PDF and EPUB file formats.
The main attraction with this new e-reader is the 12 hour battery life, and the ability to constantly be charging it, as you are reading it in direct sunlight, currently there is no word yet on how long it will take to charge. Although we do know that you can read about 50 books or 13,000 pages per charge.
This is Toshiba’s latest foray into the world of solar power, the company expects to try and cornerstone the solar powered charges for computers, tablets and netbooks.
Now sure its novelty to have a solar powered e-reader, but what about content distribution? Japanese firm KDDI in partnership with Booklista, is starting an ebook distribution business that will launch on Saturday, corresponding to the release of the Biblio Leaf. The name of the new store will be entitled “LISMO BookStore”, which will feature focusing on novels, how-to guides and business books. Currently there is only 20,000 ebooks on the store, but KDDI is seeking to expand it to over 100,000 in March 2011. If you purchase any book from December 25th to March 15th you will get half price off every ebook you buy!
A new e-reader and a new content distribution service? Sounds like they are taking this launch seriously and not relying on a 3rd party to provide the content, as so many e-readers do. Toshiba’s main competition in Japan is currently Sony, Sharp, and Amazon. If this new e-reader is your thing you can scoop one up after December 25th for ¥15,000.
KDDI Biblio Leaf e-Book Reader from HIC Network on Vimeo.
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Via Techon
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.
