Sony or Nook Touch

[jocampo]

I don't think anyone is questioning Sony's qualities or features. But at same price and same screen size as Nook Touch, you can't buy a comparable device, not new.

Are USA users ('cause Nook Touch is being marketed in USA, not Europe) willing to pay 100 more for the extra features without wifi? I don't think so.

Prior Nook Touch there was no comparable touchscreen device here in the states (eink I mean, not a tablet). Now we have two. So, with such a poor marketing that Sony has here in USA, I doubt people will opt for a 350 unless they truly investigate or need those extras.

Now, I'm very interested in seeing how the market reacts and how well the Nook Touch or Kobo is, after a few weeks I mean. Lot of bugs and issues won't force people to buy a Sony, but will make them think twice before buying a Nook.

[Poppaea]

Originally Posted by jocampo

Are USA users ('cause Nook Touch is being marketed in USA, not Europe) willing to pay 100 more for the extra features without wifi? I don't think so.

Have a look at your poll results, its telling.

[jocampo]

Originally Posted by Poppaea

Have a look at your poll results, its telling.

The poll indicates what people would buy or prefer, but not necessarily the people who can actually buy one. If that was the case, Sony's numbers would be on the roof, which is not the case, not in USA.

[anamardoll]

Funny enough, the new Nook Touch caused me to buy a Sony PRS-950.

I have a blog post planned on the subject, but basically it boils down to:

1. PDF support for my PDF books from NetGalley.
2. Landscape reading.
3. Web browsing (specifically, the Sony word-lookup-in-Wikipedia options).
4. Note/Highlight export.
5. B&N customer support experiences. (SUBJECTIVE ANECDATA TIME)

I don't much like Sony as a company, but they sure do make a nice device. I'm very happy with my new purchase.

Are USA users ('cause Nook Touch is being marketed in USA, not Europe) willing to pay 100 more for the extra features without wifi? I don't think so.

I actually paid $60 more (Best Buy sale), but yeah, I would have paid $100 more. If I can't read PDFs, I can't read half my library. And the Nook PDF approach is largely unreadable for me. Alas.

[delphin]

Originally Posted by anamardoll

Funny enough, the new Nook Touch caused me to buy a Sony PRS-950.

If you got one of the $199 PRS-950's at Best Buy, I agree that's a hell of a deal (I paid that for my 650).

On the other hand, online at SonyStyle, Sony is asking 299.99 (aren't you glad that's it's not 300?), which is another matter entirely.

I know you are feeling pretty smug now about all the 950's 'advantages' over the Nook, so I hate to point this out, but because the new Nook is Android based, it's a pretty safe bet that it's only going to be a matter of time until it will be rooted and unlocked, at which point it will very quickly have about 50 times the functionality of the PRS-950.

The Nook Touch is one of the first eInk Android devices, and not all Andorid apps are going to be a good match, because, aside from not having features like GPS and and orientation sensor, the lack of color and slow update speed of eInk is always going to be a limiting factor.

But I can still think of dozens of app categories that WILL work, and work quite well, on the Nook. Things like interactive novels, fancy calculators for businessmen, and though the limited graphics will eliminate some of the more popular jerky-twitchy games, there will still be literally hundreds of others like chess, crossword, and other puzzle and word games.

By years end, there are expected to be more than FOUR HUNDRED THOUSAND apps available in the Android Market, and if even 1% of those work on the Touch Nook, then that would be about 4000.

When this happens though, you can take some comfort from the fact that your 950 does have a slightly larger screen, because that's one thing it will alway have that the Nook Touch doesn't.

When I played with a 950, the only thing I didn't like was the fact that the browser was a little twitchy when updating and didn't work at all in landscape. If this is still the case, it wouldn't surprise me a bit, and it won't surprise me when it's STILL THE CASE A YEAR FROM NOW.

Ironically, with the Nook running Android, and Sony's near non-existent support, I wouldn't be a bit surprised to see a nicer more stable web-browser with both portrait and landscape support running on Nook well before I see one running on Sony's PRS-950.

No guarantees on that though, so if someone is really looking for these kinds of goodies, best thing they can probably do is WAIT AND SEE.

[anamardoll]

@Delphin,

Yep, I'm smug and happy in my choice.

I already have a CM7-modded Nook Color and I know very intimately what options I have on a rooted tablet. The fact of the matter is that there is nothing out there on the Google Market that I've tried that handles a PDF like this Sony reader does. So I'm pleased as punch.

I'm a hobbyist reviewer and almost half of my library is PDF ARCs sent to me by authors and publishers. The Sony, for me, was an investment that the Nook Touch -- rooted or not -- wouldn't be able to match.

I don't give a flip about calculators and crossword puzzles -- I don't use them on my android phone and I don't use them on my android tablet. I read. That's just me -- but believe me, I know my own needs and I know what the best market device for my needs are.

But thank you for your concern.

So I expect to be "taking comfort" (as you put it) in my investment for a very long time.

[taosaur]

Originally Posted by delphin

I know you are feeling pretty smug now about all the 950's 'advantages' over the Nook, so I hate to point this out, but because the new Nook is Android based, it's a pretty safe bet that it's only going to be a matter of time until it will be rooted and unlocked, at which point it will very quickly have about 50 times the functionality of the PRS-950.

Actually, it will be minus two or three days, as the new Nook is already rooted and sorta-kinda running Angry Birds. However, if you watch some of the videos of either Angry Birds or the vestigial browser accessible via the new Nook's search function (without rooting), you'll start to see why the majority of apps--anything that involves scrolling, certainly--are going to be unusable or very unpleasant to use with e-ink.

Also, as anamardoll said, B&N handles PDF terribly on all their devices, and while ezPDF may be better, it's still not good. For new adopters, it doesn't matter, because PDF is a rare (and godawful) format for new e-books, particularly if legitimately acquired, but if PDFs are a priority, none of the Nooks are the way to go.

[delphin]

Originally Posted by anamardoll

@Delphin,

Yep, I'm smug and happy in my choice.

I already have a CM7-modded Nook Color and I know very intimately what options I have on a rooted tablet. The fact of the matter is that there is nothing out there on the Google Market that I've tried that handles a PDF like this Sony reader does. So I'm pleased as punch.

You're joking right?

I find the Nook Color's built in PDF handling fine for simple reading, and there is no lack of good PDF apps for Android, that's just crap.

For rooted Nooks, if you don't like B&N's default PDF handling, you can try either Adobe's official Acrobat Reader for Android (free, but fairly limited right at the moment), or splurge and spend a couple bucks on either ezPDF or RepliGo which are both very capable commercial apps.

In my opinion, these apps already blow away the Sony's built in PDF viewer, and guess what? . . . They are getting better every day. (good luck EVER getting an update from Sony.)

The Sony includes reflow and annotations, but I just don't use that feature much, because I find Sony's half-assed implementation of the PDF annotation feature pretty useless. (at a minimum, for non-restricted non-DRM PDF's, you should be able to export them with all the graphic and text mark-ups intact, right from the Sony Reader Library, but Sony only supports a really lame text export feature)

And so far as Sony's supposedly better PDF reflow goes . . .

I have seen BOTH the Sony and Nook first hand, and Sony's PDF reflow feature seems to be just as hit or miss as the Touch Nook version - i.e. it works fantastically well on some simple text docs, and mangles the hell out of most more complicated PDF docs.

With almost 400,000 apps out there for android, including literally dozens of book viewer apps, I would be astonished if Androids PDF handling did not improve, and given Sony's record on updates, I would be just as astonished if my PRS-650's did.

[anamardoll]

@Delphin,

No, I am not joking. I haven't tried a single PDF android app that remembered my last page read -- something that is very necessary for reading a long PDF book when I usually jump between 3-4 books before finishing. I've also yet to find something that supports panning, zooming, and -- most importantly of all -- LOCKING a specific zoom setting into place for an entire book.

Sony does all these things effortlessly. The various Nook iterations don't even offer half of those features. It's a major issue for me.

Publishers send out PDF books to reviewers because they want to represent the book as it will appear on the printed page. Unfortunately, on a 6" screen that either tries to re-flow the text (which the Nook will try to do) or maintains everything at a single, 100% display without zoom (which the Nook will fall back on if the re-flow isn't working out), this is unreadable for the majority of the PDFs I receive.

Sony, by contrast, lets me tweak the zoom ratio to precisely what I need, and then lets me lock it in place. I never have to think about it for the rest of the book -- heck, it remembers my zoom settings even if I leave the book and come back later. There are all kinds of useful options for accessing different PDF formats, including the 2-column view which is necessary for "coffee table" books.

If you think any of the Nook iterations handle PDFs well, well, you haven't been reading the PDFs in my library. My Sony handles them all beautifully, and I couldn't be happier. (I had to use their 2-column view yesterday, in fact and it worked like a charm.) I love it.

If you honestly think the Nook handles PDFs better than Sony... well, I don't know what to say to that. I'm tempted to say you haven't actually read a PDF on either, but who am I to discount the opinions of a stranger? I'll just say that I have a completely different viewpoint than you.

With almost 400,000 apps out there for android, including literally dozens of book viewer apps, I would be astonished if Androids PDF handling did not improve, and given Sony's record on updates, I would be just as astonished if my PRS-650's did.

When something perfect already exists, why would I wait around in the hopes that the crappy solution gets better?

For me, the Sony PDF handling is quite literally perfect. I cannot imagine a way to improve it. Maybe I'll think of a way later, but for the moment I'm as happy as a pig in mud.

The android apps on the market currently just aren't in the same league. I like QuickOffice, but the inability to lock in a zoom or remember the last page read is very frustrating to me, and I don't see them fixing it any time soon, since they are marketing to business people with short PDFs, not readers like me.

(at a minimum, for non-restricted non-DRM PDF's, you should be able to export them with all the graphic and text mark-ups intact, right from the Sony Reader Library, but Sony only supports a really lame text export feature)

Which is still more annotation export than any of the Nooks provide.........

[delphin]

Originally Posted by taosaur

Actually, it will be minus two or three days, as the new Nook is already rooted and sorta-kinda running Angry Birds. However, if you watch some of the videos of either Angry Birds or the vestigial browser accessible via the new Nook's search function (without rooting), you'll start to see why the majority of apps--anything that involves scrolling, certainly--are going to be unusable or very unpleasant to use with e-ink.

This may come as a shocking revelation for some folks . . .

are you ready for this? . . . there are actually other Android apps besides "Angry Birds"

(Some of which actually do something USEFUL.)

I don't know who the idiot was who decided that 'Angry Birds' represents the ultimate Android benchmark, but thanks for the info, this is good news.

As I mentioned in my previous post, not all apps are going to be suitable for eInk devices, just as heavy multi-media content doesn't work on platforms with limited graphics or CPU resources.

Android has a lot of special features designed to allow maximum portability between devices, and eInk devices are just one more platform that needs to be accommodated. So once the app designers get a handle on the challenges presented by eInk devices, I think you will be surprised at how well some of the apps can be made to work on the Nook Touch.

[viviena]

Originally Posted by delphin

So once the app designers get a handle on the challenges presented by eInk devices, I think you will be surprised at how well some of the apps can be made to work on the Nook Touch.

I can't wait to be surprised. As a mobile OS, I love Android, but the diversity of models in tech specs is already a problem in ensuring app compatibility. Not a big problem, sure, but a problem nonetheless. There are apps that work flawlessly on my rooted Nook Color that have only problems on my Samsung Galaxy S, and vice versa. It'll be interesting to see how app developers deal with, if they choose to, the niche that is a rooted Nook Simple Touch.

Also, I can see how some would prefer Sony's handling of PDFs over any Android alternatives. Having used the native Nook reader, ezPDF, and the bundled QuickOffice, they've all been frustrating to me in various ways. Your mileage may vary.

[taosaur]

Originally Posted by delphin

Android has a lot of special features designed to allow maximum portability between devices, and eInk devices are just one more platform that needs to be accommodated. So once the app designers get a handle on the challenges presented by eInk devices, I think you will be surprised at how well some of the apps can be made to work on the Nook Touch.

Why don't you contact a few app designers and ask them how long until their apps will be eInk compatible. Just wear earplugs, because the laughter may well be deafening.

The development community is definitely part of the appeal of the device, but your expectations are a touch out of sync with reality.

[delphin]

Originally Posted by taosaur

Why don't you contact a few app designers and ask them how long until their apps will be eInk compatible. Just wear earplugs, because the laughter may well be deafening.

Like Amazon, B&N is a little close-mouthed about spicific sales numbers, but has confirmed that the Nooks are their best selling product of all time, with the total number of Nooks sold IN THE MILLIONS.

And it's not necessary that a large percentage of users ROOT their devices, because developers can also make their apps available to non-rooted devices through B&N.

So if you were an Android developer, would you support some stupid yaki-ce-ra cell phone (that sold about 12 units) or the new Nook?

As far as laughter goes, in today's economy, when money is on the table, no one is laughing.

[John F]

Originally Posted by Poppaea

I am sure this Nook is a fine simple reader with a touchscreen. But it is only this: a simple reader. No advanced features to enhance the actual reading experience as far as I can see.

...

For EPub, the Nook has font selection, font size, multiple margin choices, and line spacing options.

The Sony has Margin cut and font size. (does the Sony also have justification options ?).

Not to mention the multiple, large, configurable page turns buttons on the Nook.

The Nook clearly has more advanced features to enhance actual reading then the Sony.

IMO.

[ST-One]

Originally Posted by Poppaea

I am sure this Nook is a fine simple reader with a touchscreen. But it is only this: a simple reader. No advanced features to enhance the actual reading experience as far as I can see.

Das Lesen in Papierbuechern scheint ja fuer dich eine unheimliche Qual gewesen zu sein.

What, besides words on a page, could you possibly need for the actual reading "experience"?