What will e-readers be like 10 years from now?

[Braid]

Hi folks,

I've got lots of e-readers, and I love them all. I am very pleased that Kindle are pushing in the direction of physical buttons. I hope we are entering a post-touch-screen phase in the tech world. I like that Kobo are paying attention to the colour of light on their devices - with the popularity of apps like flux and operating systems having similar functions integrated as standard, I am sure warmer colour temperatures will be something coming as standard on most e-readers.

What do you think e-readers will be like ten years from now?

Colour screens are an obvious way forward. Do you think this will take off?

Will e-ink continue to dominate? Will it develop to offer quicker response times, thereby allowing PDF documents to be read more conveniently?

What other possible developments are there that may or may not happen?

Do you think e-readers will be influenced by the emerging 'smart home' or 'internet of things' trend in the tech world?

[Deskisamess]

I don't want or need buttons. I love the new Oasis, but would have preferred it without page turn buttons. They click and get dusty.

I don't need color for 95% of what I read, when I do, I use an iPad. Color e-ink may be good someday.

I don't personally need a good device for PDF documents but know many users do. I use an iPad or iPhone when I need to.

Foldable e-ink screens maybe? I'd still like more margin control than the Kindle gives, and better font control for side-loaded books. Retinal Control for page turns? Longer battery life is a given, although fairly I'm happy with the Oasis as is.

[Braid]

Originally Posted by Deskisamess

Retinal Control for page turns? Longer battery life is a given, although fairly I'm happy with the Oasis as is.

Haha, so I am hoping e-readers go in the direction of physical buttons, and you are hoping for the complete opposite.

But yeah if battery technology advances then obviously there would be longer battery life. Or manufacturers could keep battery life the same and just make the devices smaller and lighter. On the other side of things, there could be an advance in processor technology, which might improve typography or loading speeds, or alternatively, it could mean lower power consumption and so longer battery life.

[Cinisajoy]

I figure the software will change more than the hardware.
I doubt they will be influenced much by smart anythings.
Except for a few outliers, most people that get ereaders buy them to read books from that store on.
So we will and are seeing better font sizes and margin control but as to pdf I just don't see it.
*Note few in this case means thousands.

[Conan46]

E-ink will be gone in 10 years. Better phone and tablet screens, and better battery life will completely replace them. They have already begun to do so.

[dwig]

Personally, I doubt that ereaders, as we know them today, will exist at all 10 years from now. We'll just have multifunction tablets. In the electronic device world, the history has been that "one trick ponies" don't survive long.

Once technology advances to eliminate the unique advantage that the one trick pony has, it dies as its function is merged with another device. PIMs (e.g. Palm Pilots, ...) as phones became smart phones and got smaller and lighter, allowing them to assume all of the utility of the PIMs. As it is today, tablets are struggling to maintain a position outside of the Schwarzchild Radius of that Black Hole that is the ever more powerful "smart phone". The tablet world will likely absorb the ereader world as pressure increases from smart phones' the ever expanding influence.

[sealbeater]

The only thing I want or need is mass storage. I want to be able to hold 10PB of books with me at all times.

What would be nice is to have an ebook reader like the book in Neal Stephenson's Diamond Age. Something that you could give to a child and it would educate and entertain according to the child's needs. A nice durable book that could be dropped and that was about the size and thickness of a real paperback book. With pages you could turn that would change as you turned them.

That would be nice.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by dwig

Personally, I doubt that ereaders, as we know them today, will exist at all 10 years from now. We'll just have multifunction tablets. In the electronic device world, the history has been that "one trick ponies" don't survive long.

Once technology advances to eliminate the unique advantage that the one trick pony has, it dies as its function is merged with another device. PIMs (e.g. Palm Pilots, ...) as phones became smart phones and got smaller and lighter, allowing them to assume all of the utility of the PIMs. As it is today, tablets are struggling to maintain a position outside of the Schwarzchild Radius of that Black Hole that is the ever more powerful "smart phone". The tablet world will likely absorb the ereader world as pressure increases from smart phones' the ever expanding influence.

E-readers have one more advantage besides e-ink: they weigh several times less than tablets. As long as they do so, I doubt they're in danger of disappearing. Not everyone wants to read on a device that's hard to hold in one hand for long periods.

As for phone screens, they're too small for comfortable reading. Much bigger than 5'', and they become too uncomfortable for their primary function, speaking.

The way I see it, either tablets become much lighter in the future, or e-readers stay for heavy readers (admittedly a niche).

[Pajamaman]

Cloud-based and controlled.

[sealbeater]

Originally Posted by Pajamaman

Cloud-based and controlled.

Hmmm "controlled", no thanks. I think it's bad enough the Kindle readers are spied on by Amazon.

[Conan46]

Tablets will get lighter as they have continued to do. Even my new 10" Fire Tab does not feel very heavy compared to the bricks just a few years ago.

[Matilo]

e-Reader and Tablets will be the same. It will be an eye-controlled color page, foldable and unbreakable. At least I hope so.

[dwig]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

E-readers have one more advantage besides e-ink: they weigh several times less than tablets. As long as they do so, I doubt they're in danger of disappearing. ...

True, but that applies to last years 2017 vintage offerings. Come 2028, things will have changed and I don't think that there will be any significant advantage to creating a ereader only by then.

I don't think one-trick-pony ereaders will survive very long. People want excellent displays and light, but 10 years worth of tech evolution will likely deliver that in a device that can also run a range of apps and provide far more utility than a pure ereader.

[Deskisamess]

Those of us who read a lot will always want e-ink or something with the non-glare non-backlit type of screen. The ability to read outside is a big deal to many users.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by sealbeater

What would be nice is to have an ebook reader like the book in Neal Stephenson's Diamond Age. Something that you could give to a child and it would educate and entertain according to the child's needs. A nice durable book that could be dropped and that was about the size and thickness of a real paperback book. With pages you could turn that would change as you turned them.

Any tablet could do that now. The only problem is that when authors dream this stuff up, they don't take into account the real world. Marketers are going to want to jam their ads in. People in general are stupid. Programming devolves to the lowest common denominator.

At one point, TLC was The Learning Channel and Bravo was so named because it focused on art and culture.