The new Hanvon WISEreader with note taking ability

The Hanvon N500, N618, N628 and N800 all support an electromagnetic panel and stylus that allows the user to write notes and supports handwriting recognition. The N638 is the only model that doesn’t sport this feature. All run Windows CE, have either MicroSD or SD card slots for expanding storage and are expected to launch before the end of the year although prices are unknown at this time. You can see a full spec breakdown of each eReader after the jump.

Hanvon N500
- Display: 5″ E-ink Vizplex display
- Grey levels: 8
- Full keypad QWERTY Key
- Electromagnetic panel with electromagnetic pen
- On-screen handwriting with letter and word recognition technology
- Weight: 275g(without cover)
- Dimensions: 176.4mm×124.4mm×10.2mm (without cover)
- OS: WinCE
- Storage: MicroSD card up to 32GB
- Wireless: TD/ GPRS
- Supported Formats: TXT, PDF, HTML, JPG, BMP, PNG, GIF, MP3, WAV, WMA
- Power: Li-ion 1500mAh
- Launch date in USA: 2010

Hanvon N618
- Display: 6″ E-ink Vizplex display
- Grey levels: 16
- Electromagnetic panel with electromagnetic pen
- On-screen handwriting with letter and word recognition technology
- Weight: 260g(without cover)
- Dimensions: 176.6mm×124.8mm×10.5mm (without cover)
- OS: WinCE
- Storage: TF card up to 32GB
- Wireless: Wi-Fi
- Supported Formats: TXT, HTXT, PDF, HTML, XLS, DOC, JPG, TIF, BMP, PNG, GIF, MP3, WAV, WMA
- Power: Li-ion 2350mAh
- Launch date in USA: 2010

Hanvon N628
- Display: 6″ E-ink Vizplex display
- Grey levels: 8
- Electromagnetic panel with electromagnetic pen
- On-screen handwriting with letter and word recognition technology
- Weight: 308.3g (without cover)
- Dimensions: 181mm×137.5 mm×11.4mm (without cover)
- OS: WinCE
- Storage: TF card up to 16GB
- Wireless: TD/EDGE/GPS
- Supported Formats: TXT, PDF, HTML, DOC, MEB, XLS, HTXT, JPG, PNG, BMP, GIF, PNG, TIF, MP3, WAV, WMA
- Power: Li-ion 1500mAh
- Launch date in USA: 2010

Hanvon N638
- Display: 6″ E-ink Vizplex display
- Grey levels: 16
- Full keypad QWERTY Key?
- Weight: 266.4g(without cover)
- Dimensions: 203mm×134 mm×10.35mm (without cover)
- OS: WinCE
- Storage: MicroSD card up to 32GB
- Wireless: Wi-Fi
- Supported Formats: TXT, PDF, HTML, JPG, PNG, BMP, GIF, MP3, WAV, WMA
- Power: Li-ion 2500mAh
- Launch date in USA: 2010

Hanvon N800
- Display: 8″ E-ink Vizplex display
- Grey levels: 16
- Electromagnetic panel with electromagnetic pen
- On-screen handwriting with letter and word recognition technology
- Weight: 480g(without cover)
- Dimensions: 226.3mm×163.5 mm×10.2mm(without cover)
- OS: WinCE
- Storage: TF card up to 32GB
- Wireless: Wi-Fi
- Supported Formats: TXT, HTXT, MTXT, HTML, PDF, DOC, CEI, HCEI, PPT, XSL, EPUB, CHM, JPG, BMP, PNG, TIF, PPM, JIF, PCX, MP3, WAV, WMA, LRC, AMR
- Power: Li-ion 2200mAh
- Launch date in USA: 2010

Source: Engadget

Time for some Nook-e

The Nook offers an abundance of features that makes it perhaps the best Kindle competition out there. It has a unique (if you don’t count Spring Design’s Alex) two-screen design — one a large 6-inch E-Ink screen and the other a 3.5 inch TFT LCD touch screen. It measures in at 7.7″ high x 4.9″ wide x 0.5″ deep and weighs 11.2 ounces.

The largest advantage of the Nook, and one which most other eReaders lack, is the ability to connect via Wifi b/g or 3G to the Barnes & Noble online store — a direct competitor to Amazon’s Kindle store. In fact, everything about B&N’s strategy for the Nook involves comparing it directly to the Kindle 2 (down to the $259 price tag) — there’s even an comparison chart on their website. And why not? The Kindle still controls the majority of the eReader market.

You can preorder the B&N Nook now for $259. First orders are expected to ship on November 30th.

The Nook further offers 2GB of internal storage (enough for 1500 eBooks), and expandable microSD slot, the ability to load your own pictures to create screen savers, a battery that takes 3.5 hours to fully charge (via USB connect) and lasts 10 days with no wireless running and supports nearly all reading formats (including PDFs) and plays MP3s. Barnes & Noble really took a long, hard look at what was needed to knock the Kindle off its lofty perch. With the Nook’s dual-screens, 3G, store connection and (what we deem very important) the ability to purchase in retail outlets it’s quite likely to do so.

The Barnes and Noble eReader. Photo from Gizmodo.

The most interesting thing about the B&N offering is that it contains two screen technologies on one surface. The top screen is your typical 6-inch 600×800 E-Ink display while the bottom quarter features a color 480×144 150dpi LCD multi-touch screen used for utility and QWERTY input (similar to the iPhone). The idea is to have color book library that you can flip through a la iTunes albums. The as-of-yet unnamed device (update: it’s labeled the “Nook“) has page forward/backward buttons on each site, but that represents the only real buttons on the eReader.

There’s no further mention of the eReader running Android — a rumor that we posted earlier. There’s also a question as to how much this combining of LCD and E-Ink will decrease battery life. E-Ink displays are notoriously low energy consumers with most eReaders on the market lasting 6,000-8,000 pageflips before needing a charge. The LCD screen could drain that number by quite a bit depending on how much it is used.

And while there’s no official name given for the device, take a look at the back of the case which has a logo of a medieval or renaissance era scribe. Gizmodo stated that they disliked the name of the unreleased device (and that it possibly could have changed by the time of the release). Are we looking at the B&N Gutenberg or Dante? Or it could be something generically bad as the “Reader Gal” as the Gizmodo image gallery for the device is titled. UPDATE: It seems that B&N has gone with Nook.

See the rest of the eReader pictures after the jump.

The Microsoft Courier tablet PC

Except the Microsoft Courier isn’t a tablet per se, it’s a booklet — much like the rumored Asus Eee Reader. It has a hinge in the middle that contains a iPhone-like menu button with two 7″ touchscreens on either side. The screens support multitouch, finger, stylus and handwriting. It also has a camera embedded in the back of the device.

It looks like Microsoft is series about making the Courier a success. They’ve supported the design process with their best and brightest including their Pioneer Studio division. Gizmodo looks to have the exclusive scoop on the device and they promise more information in the next couple of days. Read their full story complete with video after the jump.

Courier: First Details of Microsoft’s Secret Tablet

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It feels like the whole world is holding its breath for the Apple tablet. But maybe we’ve all been dreaming about the wrong device. This is Courier, Microsoft’s astonishing take on the tablet.

Courier is a real device, and we’ve heard that it’s in the “late prototype” stage of development. It’s not a tablet, it’s a booklet. The dual 7-inch (or so) screens are multitouch, and designed for writing, flicking and drawing with a stylus, in addition to fingers. They’re connected by a hinge that holds a single iPhone-esque home button. Statuses, like wireless signal and battery life, are displayed along the rim of one of the screens. On the back cover is a camera, and it might charge through an inductive pad, like the Palm Touchstone charging dock for Pre.

Until recently, it was a skunkworks project deep inside Microsoft, only known to the few engineers and executives working on it—Microsoft’s brightest, like Entertainment & Devices tech chief and user-experience wizard J. Allard, who’s spearheading the project. Currently, Courier appears to be at a stage where Microsoft is developing the user experience and showing design concepts to outside agencies.

Microsoft has a history of collaborating with other firms, especially in the E&D division: Zune and Xbox have both gone through similar design processes. (And plans for the Microsoft Store leaked through a third-party agency were confirmed as genuine prototype layouts and concepts.) This video is branded Pioneer Studios, a Microsoft division within E&D that specializes in this kind of work, working with another agency that’s a long-time Microsoft collaborator on confidential projects.

The Courier user experience presented here is almost the exact opposite of what everyone expects the Apple tablet to be, a kung fu eagle claw to Apple’s tiger style. It’s complex: Two screens, a mashup of a pen-dominated interface with several types of multitouch finger gestures, and multiple graphically complex themes, modes and applications. (Our favorite UI bit? The hinge doubles as a “pocket” to hold items you want move from one page to another.) Microsoft’s tablet heritage is digital ink-oriented, and this interface, while unlike anything we’ve seen before, clearly draws from that, its work with the Surface touch computer and even the Zune HD.

Over the next couple days we’ll be diving much, much deeper into Courier, so stay tuned.

The Onyx Boox eReader - Only in China for now

The WiFi enabled Boox has eBook, music playback and web browsing capability as well as a comic or manga mode. It has a SD card slot for extra storage and a battery that will last through 8,000 pageflips (an average of a few weeks charge). The interface is a little different from most eReaders that we see on Best Tablet Review. It has four circular buttons surrounding a thumbstick that can be used to interface with the device in addition to the touchscreen.

The Onyx Boox also allows for stylus calibration and considering one of the device’s partners is Wacom we’re expecting it to be very accurate. It has a variety of language selections, including English, and more on the way depending on market appeal. Onyx will also support the device with an online books store similar to Amazon and Sony’s efforts. The device seems very malleable, with options to increase or decrease width, height and zoom (from 75% to 400%) with font support. It also supports all the major eBook formats (PDF, EPUB, TXT, CHM, RTF, PRC, HTML, PDB, JPG, PNG, BMP, TIFF) and has handwritten annotation.

All in all a decent looking eReader. No price or possible North American release was mention. Thanks to Slashgear for recapping the translation from Engadget China.

The dead simple CrunchPad

The major downside to the CrunchPad is that it will have no internal storage. It operates off the cloud-computing concept, meaning all of your programs exist online rather than on your tablet’s hard drive. This also means the functionality of the device depends on internet connection and speed. If you have no internet connection then you have a nice looking slab of technology. Also, if your internet speed is limited it will take the CrunchPad longer to process your information.

The major upside to the CrunchPad will be the affordability. Though it was originally meant to come out around $300, the price has now been raised to $400. While still very cheap for a tablet, it may not be inexpensive enough to pull people away from $300 netbooks that provide the same functionality.

Another interesting tidbit is that the CrunchPad will supposedly have it’s own OS (operating system) build specifically for the tablet. This most likely means it will run faster as it will have an OS dedicated to cloud computing.

Here are the rest of the CrunchPad specs according to the Singapore Strait Times (July 31st, 2009):

• Dimensions: 12.77 x 7.83 x 0.74?
• Weight: 2.65 lbs.
• Screen: 12″
• Hardware: 1.6GHz Atom & 1GB RAM
• Software: Webkit browser/operating system, developed by the Fusion Garage team
• Peripherals: 1x USB port built-in, for keyboard or mouse
• Connectivity: WiFi & 3G, with option for mobile broadband
• Price: Unconfirmed, estimated $399
• Sale Date: Unconfirmed, around Thanksgiving 2009