Zhesty.NET - Gadgets and Technology

Don't look now, but Mirasol has just arisen from the dead. Today, Korea's Kyobo Book Centre and Qualcomm jointly unveiled the world's first Mirasol-coated e-reader, just a few months after CEO Paul Jacobs heralded the demise of his company's color e-paper format. The device, known as the Kyobo eReader, sports a 5.7-inch, 1024 x 768 color display with 223ppi and touchscreen capabilities, runs Android 2.3 and is powered by a 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S2 CPU. Kyobo says you'll be able to use the WiFi-enabled slate for "weeks" on a single charge, as long as you do so at decreased brightness, and for a total of 30 minutes per day. The eReader is available now for around $310, but only in South Korea. There's no indication that it'll be making its way to other markets anytime soon.

Back in April, the Nook Color underwent a magical change of sorts: a software update that transformed the device from a color screen e-reader into an honest to goodness Android tablet. It was the company's first swipe at the space -- a backdoor approach that beat out fellow e-reader manufacturers like Amazon and Kobo. Its follow-up, the Nook Tablet, marks the company's first out-of-the-box shot at the consumer tablet market. Not to mention, it also goes head to head with the Kindle Fire, a device that's sure to be one of the best-selling gadgets of the holiday season, thanks to its price and wide content selection.

Does the Nook Tablet have what it takes to topple the Kindle Fire? Do the product's benefits justify its $50 premium over Amazon's device -- or the recently discounted and soon to be upgraded Nook Color for that matter?

We've already established that the Galaxy Tab 10.1 is a great tablet. Then, just recently, we summarily found that the 1.2-inch smaller Galaxy Tab 8.9 is an even better tablet -- at least for anyone who wants to take their slate places. So, following that logic, the even more petite Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus should be the best of the three, right?
Not so fast. We've been here before, and things weren't exactly great. The original Galaxy Tab was, of course, a 7-incher and wasn't universally well received thanks to a number of problems -- the first being a $600 MSRP. Another issue was an Android 2.2 build that tried its best but was ultimately ill-suited for tablet duties. This new 7-inch installment packs a dual-core 1.2GHz processor, a tablet-friendlier build of Android 3.2 Honeycomb and a somewhat more palatable $400 price tag.
So, it's clearly better equipped than its predecessor, but that one shipped a whopping 12 months ago. How does the newer, fancier Tab compete in this newer, fancier present? Read on to find out.

After last week's Kindle Fire teardown, Barnes & Noble's new slate must have been quaking in its boots. The Nook Tablet just had its moment under the knife, courtesy of screw driver-packing site iFixit. There's really not a whole heck of a lot of surprising things happening inside the $249 device, according to the site. There's a battery that's still emblazoned with a "NOOKCOLOR" under the model number, in spite of the new tablet's better battery life. And then there's 16GB of storage made by SanDisk and that 1GHz dual-core processor. Lots of shots of tablet guts in the source link below.

Literary changes may be afoot in Norway, where one bookstore is looking to drastically revamp the e-book medium. Last week, Norwegian retailer Norli Libris announced that it would begin selling books on small plastic memory cards that can be inserted into the backs of e-readers. Each card, known as the Digi Short, would contain a single file, allowing users to devour one publication at a time on their customized, Android 2.1-laced Kibano Digi Readers. Doesn't that sort of defeat the purpose of an e-reader? It certainly seems like it, though Norli Libris' Caroline Heitmann says the idea is to simply convert e-books into physical commodities, like their ancestors. Because of this, these one-hitters would be exempt from VAT duties within Norway, though Norli Libris says they'll likely be priced on par with their downloadable counterparts, which won't help the consumer much. The company hopes that this system will be adopted as an industry standard, though it's only available at Norli Libris for the moment. Head past the break for a rather obvious demo video.

Archos' new Arnova 9 G2 tablet looks to be the very definition of a mixed bag. It's part of the company's budget-minded Arnova line, so it will likely be relatively inexpensive (there's still no official word on a price), and it packs some specs that range from decent to high-end, including a 1GHz ARM A8 processor and a 9.7-inch IPS display with a 1,024 x 768 resolution (the same as the iPad). But it also runs the smartphone-minded Android 2.3 OS on that decidedly tablet-sized display and, as with other inexpensive Android tablets, you'll have to make do without official access to the Android Market (Archos offers the Appslib application store instead). Still curious? Details on everything but a price and release date can be found at the source link below.

There seems little doubt that the Kindle Fire will prove one of the holiday season's biggest hits. At $200, the budget tablet will no doubt prove too good a deal to pass up for many consumers not ready to make the price commitment to the industry-leading iPad or a top-tier Android tablet like the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1. Of course, the Fire wasn't the only budget Android tablet to launch this week -- heck, it wasn't even the only budget Android tablet launched by an e-reader producer. Barnes & Noble's Nook Tablet also, conveniently, hit stores earlier this week. The company took what it got right with the Nook Color, souped it up a bit internally and wound up with a solid competitor to the Fire.