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posted by cmn32480 on Tuesday November 22 2016, @12:04PM   Printer-friendly
from the way-of-the-dodo dept.

My ad-supported Kindle's buttons are dying, so I'm in the market for a new eBook reader. I figured the upcoming sales would be a good time to buy one. To my surprise, eBook readers seem to be regressing rather than advancing. My hard requirements are:

  1. e-Ink display
  2. Text-to-speech
  3. Don't need company's software to transfer books

And my preferred features include:

  1. Good PDF support (so a larger display with the same aspect ratio of a piece of paper). I want to read technical books on it, something I can't do with the Kindle.
  2. Stable software
  3. Doesn't spy on everything you do (Kindles track absolutely everything)
  4. Support for multiple voices. The same voice gets annoying after a few books.

I'm unable to find anything which fulfills all those conditions. Any recommendations? Before you say smartphone, it needs an e-Ink display. Are smartphones and tablets killing eBook readers?


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  • (Score: 1) by ankh on Tuesday November 22 2016, @01:53PM

    by ankh (754) on Tuesday November 22 2016, @01:53PM (#431203) Homepage

    tempting but not recently updated, is it happening?

    "Once we hit $100,000 in funding we will upgrade Android from 4.0.4 to at least 5.1.1. ..."

    but their funding is around $250K according to the same page.

    I want something like that, but ...

  • (Score: 2) by RamiK on Tuesday November 22 2016, @03:17PM

    by RamiK (1813) on Tuesday November 22 2016, @03:17PM (#431251)

    Yeah I wasn't sure about that very issue as well as the availability of a device tree so I put in SOON to be on the safe side. Looking at Good E-Reader's facebook page [facebook.com], they are already shipping [facebook.com].

    Without a device tree, the Onyx Boox Max has a larger battery and more RAM at a similar price and is defintely available for purchase right now so I had to link it. Still, a real shame considering their device tree isn't made available [mobileread.mobi].

    --
    compiling...
  • (Score: 3, Informative) by richtopia on Tuesday November 22 2016, @04:42PM

    by richtopia (3160) on Tuesday November 22 2016, @04:42PM (#431320) Homepage Journal

    I don't trust Android for ereaders. I had the Nook which was Android 2.1 under the hood, and it would have parasitic power loss over long periods of time. After that broke I switched to Kobo and I never charge it. It is uncanny - I will charge it when I'm reading and see a usb cord in front of me, but that is not common.

    To be fair my Kobo Aura is a newer generation than the Nook Touch Glow it replaced. And Android did provide some ability to install apps like Opera, but that was never supported and quite buggy. Back to the original post, I don't know of any reader that meets all of the requirements listed, particularly the size requirement of 8.5x11". You may want to consider multiple devices, like a smartphone for TTS and ereader for reading.