Deutsche Telekom’s e-book reader probably has gone the way of the Dodo, but the Germans are still getting a home-made Kindle competitor. The device, dubbed txtr, was announced at the Frankfurt Book Fair that’s happening in Deutschland right now, and it will become available in that country as soon as December 1 (as pre-order).
The txtr is the product of a Berlin-based start-up of the same name. It features a 6-inch grayscale e-ink screen, a microSD slot (an 8GB card is included in the package, 1GB flash), an ARM11 CPU (532MHz), 64MB RAM, a micro-USB port and “ultra-long battery life” (company quote). The device is sized at 151×131×12 mm and weighs 281g.
You can download books and other documents via the USB port, Wi-Fi (802.11b/g) or the txtr wireless service (EDGE/GPRS). The reader can display PDFs and books in the EPUB format. Currently, there are over 10,000 books offered in the official txtr store, with about 3,200 of them being English books. It costs $18 per month to access your documents via the web and synchronize web sites with the reader.
When compared to the Kindle, the price for the txtr can’t really be called competitive at this point: $480 is a lot of money. Another problem for txtr: The Kindle will hit German stores as early as this Monday, while the txtr will be delivered to German customers December 15.
A company representative also said a new version featuring a 9.7-inch touch screen is already being considered for next year.
Via netzwertig [GER]
In other words, this has absolutely no chance what-so-ever. It’s insanely expensive, it has microscopic selections of books and the kindle is launching in germany in the very very soon future whereas this won’t be out for another month or two.
Why would you buy this? You wouldn’t. They aren’t going to have any sales at all. Well, maybe a couple just from people who hate Kindles or something. But I still kind of doubt it. $260 for a superior device or $480 for a lesser device? Hmm.
First of all, the “microscopic selection of book” is rather the kind of thing that I would attribute to the Kindle: the books that you can purchase with it are a) english-only and b) restricted to amazon’s file format. With the ePub-format, you already have access to millions of free eBooks, notably classics, in dozens of languages. A new market will be created dealing with the ePub-format if Sony and the others continue to support it. And I hope so. The logic of restricting the Kindle may be rentable for Amazon in short terms, but on the long run, it’s nonsense, for people will realise that they’re being fooled. If people buy the iPod, an inferior product for more money, just because of the name, then here, they will pay some more money for a superior product: for a product that corresponds with their open mentality. Let’s hope that the open mentality is widespread enough in order to help the txtr take off (I haven’t tested it yet, though). No book will ever be unreadable.
Serkan,
Thanks for picking this up. If I may let me pls correct a few facts:
- at 319 Euro, the reader will only be marginally more expensive than the Kindle as it can only be order in the US and buyers must add shipping and taxes.
- So far, txtr offers 200’000 titles of which 40’000k are in German – it is a lot more domestic content than amazon has to offer.
- Browsing and buying content over the air is free.
- the 18$ per month are for share all docs in a group in real time and or for syncing large numbers of subscription over the air. None of this is possible with the Kindle outside the US.
- txtr is the first eReader which offers an SDK for developers allowing them to build their own apps.
- plus, txtr is compacter and better looking ;-)
We build the txtr and its service because we believe the world need an open alternative to the Kindle and because we believe it can be improved. Yes we are small, but we are enthusiastic about eReaders and will keep improving through the help of the community.
I hope what people with ideas like Joshua come away with from articles like this is that the Kindle despite its always on connection is actually the inferior device. The new devices coming like the PocketBook 360, the Txtr, Plastic Logic etc are much better devices for their design , usability and firmware etc and for Txtr the open platform.
I would be the first to get the Txtr, look at the feature below:
Wifi
Capacitor button and scroll
micro sd slot
read PDF and other file the kindle can read
and best of all I can develop my own app for this
If Kindle cost $300, then I would buy this for $450 without all the restrict that I would have with the Kindle.