Pocketbook launches five e-readers at IFA 2010

FIVE E-READERS HAVE been launched by Pocketbook International at IFA 2010 that have features including text to speech, accelerometers and Linux and Android operating systems.

The products will be available from the end of October and prices will be announced on 6 October at the Frankfurt book fair. The top of the line product, the IQ, has Android 2.0, a 7-inch 800x600 TFT touchscreen  display, an SD card slot for up to 32GB, WiFi, a 1,600mAhr battery, 256MB of RAM and a 533Mhz Intel Core CPU.

The other four products are the Pro 602, Pro 603, Pro 902 and Pro 903, with the 6-series having 6-inch screens and the 9-series 9.7-inch displays. All these products also have a Samsung 533Mhz CPU, 2GB of storage, 256MB of RAM, 800x600 TFT touchscreens, the Linux kernel 2.6.28 OS, a 1,530mAhr battery, accelerometers, an SD card slot for up to 32GB, micro USB, WiFi and an earphone jack. The 9-series only differs in that it has a stylus for the touchscreen and because it has a larger screen its battery life is only 7,000 page turns compared to the 6-series' 14,000 turns.

The Pocketbook 301, a 6-inch e-reader and the Pocketbook 302, a 5-inch e-reader, have touchscreens, WiFi, Bluetooth and a feature called 360degrees that uses a g-sensor.

The e-readers also come with a dictionary for up to 20 languages and 16 text formats. Books can be downloaded from Pocketbook's own website bookland.net but the devices can also obtain books from other websites. The Hong Kong based company already has 43 per cent of the Chinese market and is aiming for 20 per cent of the western European market. µ