Why haven't E-readers advanced like other tech?

Factual Questions
41

I read on my iPad. An older one (so old I can’t put Disney+ on it, not so old I can’t watch Netflix on it). It’s a full sized iPad, so I read it horizontally in two column mode in the MapleRead app. iBooks only allows you to read two columns at certain magnifications, and my eyes are tired at the end of the day when I’m reading before sleepy time without my glasses. I need it bigger than iBooks allows you to have it two columns (which is a change because you used to be able to and they took it away).

I’ve read on my phone and computer and a few different kindles and I am getting fairly good for an amateur at tweaking my epub files for my personal preferences that can’t be set in a reader well. Reading on my iPad is my favorite, but I had to buy the other app because of iBooks’ limits. Like you can’t have custom fonts unless you do all these weird work arounds in your html and css. When you put your own mobi file on a kindle, it doesn’t seem to save it in books but rather in documents and the cover isn’t always shown until you open the book, which is a great big bummer. Each device and app has advantages and disadvantages (I like auto night mode, Maplereads doesn’t have it, for example). But I like that there is variety and I’m tech savvy enough now that if my iPad died tonight, I could have a kindle up and running fairly quickly. I didn’t like the droid I used. I mean, the book looked fine, but getting files to that particular device was a pain.

So yeah they have gotten better in a lot of ways but I wish individual apps/software was more consistent. It’s not as common now, but remember how you used to go to a website and it wouldn’t quite work on your browser, but it’d work much better on another? That kind of is what goes on now with reader apps, even when they use the same type of files (nook, kindle, and itunes all use different ones, plus some stuff is still out there in pdf or even .txt/.rtf). If you take the same book and open it on several different devices, your visual experience can vary widely. This one doesn’t render italics unless it’s formatted like xyz, this one won’t let you override the spacing. So hopefully some day it’ll get to the point where the same file is more consistent, aside from user preferences.

42

There can be no doubt that the Kindle DX was the epitome of Kindle design. I have always supposed that Amazon is more interested in selling the books than the hardware and is not very interested in improving the design.

Am I correct to say there are no large-screen readers available?

43

I have a Kobo Forma, which is roughly equivalent to the Kindle Oasis. (It cannot handle audiobooks, but it can handle epubs.)

I used to have a Nook (I think the Simple Touch, which had buttons) which I bought used, and eventually replaced when the batteries started dying. Before battery death, I could easily go two to four weeks between charges, and I read the e-reader a lot.

The Kobo Forma is somewhat larger, but honestly that’s not an “advancement”, as I could have bought a large ebook years ago. The visual quality is better, but 300 DPI is more than sufficient for reading. I can even read manga on it (the Japanese version specifically has more memory because that market has a lot of manga readers). It has buttons, which is cool, but some Kindles actually had miniature physical keyboards. It has wi-fi capability, which I never use, but some customers use all the time. It’s waterproof; my old Nook was at least somewhat waterproof but had problems with milk. (Yes, you read that right. I can’t get mad at Barnes & Noble for not expecting that situation.) Page flip speed is pretty fast; the Nook’s button could be held down to enable you to speed through a book (and sometimes that would happen when you just tapped the button). The Forma does not do that, for both good and ill.

The Forma has a light that’s slightly better than the older e-readers, but there’s little room for improvement. It’s not backlit, but even that technology is not that new. The most advanced lighting feature is a “night light” or “warm light” mode, which my PC has, every smartphone has, etc. Supposedly some have a lighting level detector. I don’t know, as I pretty much never use the light, unless I’m reading a PDF with tiny text.

IMO there’s little need for “improvement”. E-readers have sufficient battery life, screen quality, lighting quality, and size to satisfy customers. The biggest battle is over formatting (such as e-readers not being able to handle epubs), and these formats tend to be quite old. Kindles don’t have epubs because Amazon wants you to buy their books (not sold as epubs) and American libraries offer ebooks in Kindle format. (In Canada, they do this in epub format.)

A decent e-reader would go for $100. The Forma is about $300 CAD. I spent the extra money because I wanted a not-dying e-reader with buttons, epub capability and a larger screen. That’s not worth an extra $200 to most people. I guess I’m a sucker who will pay $200 for buttons.

44

I linked to several in a post above.

45

Who says e-readers have not improved? The first Kindle had a slow, low resolution gray screen screen. It did not have a backlight. It was not remotely waterproof. Newer generations have higher contrast, higher resolution screens, paperwhite backgrounds and integral backlights. You can drop them in the tub and they still work.

The original kindle had UI issues, and a form factor that included a full keyboard and arrow pads for navigation, which turned out to be a poor idea. Newer Kindles have touch screens, swipe gestures, etc. The screen resolution has gone from 150 ppi to 227 ppi to 300 ppi. Memory capacity has also improved with each generation, and the price of the paperwhite is about half of what it once was.

Just what were you looking for that isn’t there? These are specialist devices, optimized to one thing very well. E-Ink displays are perfect for long reading sessions, because passive screens have less eyestrain than active ones, they don’t fool your brain into staying awake after you are done, and they use a tiny fraction of the battery power so the device can be smaller and lighter and last for weeks instead of hours. There’s just currently not a lot of room for improvement.

46

Absolutely different. I’ve read some ebooks in the past on tablets and found it acceptable, but the Kindle Paperwhite is immeassurably better. Tablets are relatively big and heavy consume a lot of power, whereas my Paperwhite is small (but its pages similar in size to the average paperback), and font sizes and types are selectable, and it’s light as a feather. The front-lighting is completely different than LCD backlighting because there’s no glare and it can be turned down as much as necessary; it compares more to a printed page being front-lit than to LCD backlighting. You can read it in total darkness, in dim light, or outside in bright sunlight, and in theory you should adjust the front-lighting accordingly, but I just have set it at “11” and that seems to suffice for most indoor lighting conditions.

I think the main reason ereaders haven’t advanced like tablets is just that they’re single-purpose devices that do what they do very well, so what’s to advance except maybe slightly faster processors, more storage, and even better screens, toward which the Paperwhite was a major advance. The battery lasts for weeks of heavy use. So I intend to keep my Kindle a long time.

47

I really miss my Sony PRS-350, which suffered a death by broken USB port after several years of use. The 5 inch screen made it (just) small enough to put in a shirt or jacket pocket, and it had the full Oxford Dictionary of English and Oxford American Dictionary built in (along with several translating dictionaries.) I now have Moon+ Reader Pro that links to an off-line ODoE app on Android devices, but the integration isn’t remotely as tight. And of course battery life on modern phones/tablets is abysmal.

48

Given a choice between reading a book on the computer or the phone and reading it on my Kindle Oasis, I’ll take the Oasis. It doesn’t hurt my eyes, and no matter where I am, I can read it. I carry it with me everywhere.

ETA: wolfpup, what do you call “heavy use”? I can run my Kindle out in a day or two, but we’re also talking 3-4 hours of continuous use.

49

Is that with the sidelight on?

50

Frontlights, not backlights.

The OP mentioned screen size and resolution, which makes me wonder if he wants to read something like scanned pdfs, maps, diagrams, comics, etc. For just text, today’s basic e-readers are indeed perfectly adequate and I don’t see much room for improvement.

51

I’m not familiar with the Oasis, but the ad claims “months” of battery life, though that probably presupposes wireless off (mine is always off anyway), probably a low-light setting, and only maybe an hour or so a night.

The battery on my Kindle Paperwhite (I forget the exact model, but it’s probably second or third generation) has been getting weaker, but after years of use I can still get through a big book at 3-6 hours a night that might take me a week to read, and still have power left over. Fortunately, although Amazon doesn’t encourage it, I have a third-party battery kit that should make it easy to replace the battery when it really starts deteriorating. For anyone doing this, make sure you order the right battery for your EXACT model of Kindle (which isn’t always easy to find out, either) because very similar models of Kindle can use very similar batteries that are nevertheless incompatible. Even the Paperwhite series switched battery designs halfway through it evolution. They all look identical but the older ones have three connectors and the newer one have four.

52

To all those people who have posted that I still do not understand what a Kindle is about, I must admit you are right.

My only hope for some saving grace is that it seems to prove that seniors do have difficulty understanding new technology. I just hope the reason is not just that I’m stupid but that there are also some other reasons why this is often true.

Meanwhile, I thank those people for pointing out the true workings of a Kindle.

53

Charged TiO[sub]2[/sub] particles; most of the individual titiania can’t be ionized.

54

I despise reading for any great length of time on an LED screen, phone, computer or tablet. With the series of Kobos I’ve had over the years I can read for hours with no eyestrain and the lit screens are great for nighttime reading without disturbing my spouse who is a very light sleeper. I have an Aura H2O now but I’ll likely get a Forma once it kicks the bucket. Being able to sideload epubs is the bonus feature that keeps me from buying a Kindle. The tech that’s inside has advanced in a great many ways, it’s just more subtle, as other have noted.

55

Those newer feaetures have been in existence for a long while, though. The only changes I expect to e-readers would be incremental and mainly software changes.

Why are arrow pads a poor idea? The very first e-reader I owned was a Kobo, but not the Forma, and did not have buttons. I would tap on the right side of the screen to page forward, and about a third of the time it would move backward one page. It really felt like the touchscreen-only model existed purely to be “cool”. I’m currently using buttons. I never use the touchscreen to turn pages, only to select books or occasionally turn the light or wi-fi on or off.

I use Calibre and Adobe to organize and load books, so I have little need for a keyboard on an e-reader, but some people want to use the e-reader for that. If there’s no keyboard, it needs a vibrating feedback function so people will know what they’ve actually typed.

(I have this problem at work. My password is long because the info is private. When I use the new scanner, I have to put in the password into a touchscreen on the scanner. I get the password wrong at least half the time, despite not actually forgetting the password.)

56

It’s been a long time since I looked at an e-reader. They have a role when space is limited and during travel. The early models did not seem that enjoyable to read. I’m sure they have improved and there is now a massive selection of material.

But some studies have showed people retain more from a physical book (like three times as much, not that I’ve read the actual studies). I much prefer actual books and often read non-fiction where retention is desirable. Some of the books I like are probably not available in e-format. Prices vary but are sometimes surprising.

None of this answers why the readers aren’t better, except the market may be limited by folks who feel likewise. Used books may be cheaper and more available now than any other time in history. People might pay $30-150 for an e-reader, and adding lights and features doesn’t seem that difficult. Better fonts, graphics, resolution and readability exist. But I suspect some are content to use their phones and not need another thing. Some have tablets which offer many of the same things. Many rarely read at all or not in volume. And some of the heavy readers like me prefer holding a volume to skimming a device.

57

Wow, I really started something here.

Re: the comments about the Kind DX. It came out in 2009! They could do a big (perhaps too big) screen then but now???

And the links to those large epaper things are interesting but they highlight my key beef: these should be a lot cheaper. (Well, not the draw on ones, maybe.) Hundreds of Euros. Wow.

I just find the 6" format too small for my aging eyes. So a bit bigger but not really huge. I’m also a fast reader to I find it a pain to repeated tap to change page. So a bigger screen might also mean a slower pace on the taps.

I just want to say that I will not be addressing any issue regarding “Why would you want one of those?” or anything. That’s a completely unrelated topic.

I was asking mainly about the economics of these vs. standard tech progress. It would be like if cell phones froze at the flip/feature phone level … and cost a surprising amount at that.

58

ftg

Your sentence can be used to answer your question:
There is huge global consumer demand for cell phones. That results in more competitors and more competition for those consumers. That results in innovation (faster, lighter, better screens etc) and cheaper prices.

There is little consumer demand for e-readers so there’s few competitors and no incentive for them to innovate or reduce prices. (As you say, why people don’t use e-readers is a different topic).

I like my iPhone 8 and think that generally Apple has an admirable history of innovation, but I’m under no illusion; if Apple had no competition, I’d be using a Gen 1 iPhone and paying $3,000 for it.

Welcome to capitalism!

59

It’s like graphing calculators. The TI-84 is still $100. It was $100 thirty years ago. It hasn’t changed much at all. It’s a small market, the current product pretty much does everything the market wants, there isn’t much competition. So they keep churning them out and selling them at the same price.

ETA: Technically, the TI-84 has only been out for twenty years. But it’s not a huge leap in functionality from the TIs we used in the 90s, and they were around $100 too.

60

I think there is another important factor: the E Ink Corporation owns the patent for the e-Ink displays, and effectively has a monopoly on this type of display.