Iriver launches WiFi Story, a wireless-enabled ebook reader

 

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Posted on 9 Jul 2010 at 11:17

Iriver's new WiFi Story is the successor to the original Story ebook reader. It's under 10mm thick and weighs only 292g, making it significantly lighter than not only a paperback novel, but also Apple's 680g WiFi iPad. The 2GB of memory might seem paltry, but it's enough for hundreds of books.

It's also considerably cheaper than the iPad, and has a "direct, embedded connection to the WHSmith online book store", meaning you're never left without a good book to read. No details were given about how this deal works, or how much it costs, but it's clearly designed to compete head to head with Amazon's Kindle reader with its 3G connection, and will likely be free to use. The only cost will probably be purchasing ebooks from WHSmith's ebook store.

The WiFi Story has the same a 6in, 600x800 resolution screen as the original Story, and also has the same QWERTY keyboard. It also has the same headphone socket and microphone for listening to MP3s and recording memos.

The device runs a customised version of Linux called iriver Flow; this offers a "powerful, feature-rich interface, capable of quickly rendering documents, pages and menus". Landscape-orientated books can be easily rotated for horizontal viewing using a button on the keyboard.

Format support is wide: EPub, PDF, TXT, FB2 and DJVU support ensures compatibility with any commercial ebook formats, while there's also support for viewing Microsoft Excel, Powerpoint and Word documents.

However, although iriver claims that the keyboard means you can use the WiFi Story for taking notes, memos and managing your diary, we're not entirely convinced that people want all these extras on an ebook reader.

Also, the limitations of the 16-level grayscale screen mean it isn't much good for images, and many people prefer Apple's iBook application which allows you to 'turn' pages and tells you how much is left in the chapter.

The WiFi Story will be on sale in WHSmith stores and online, and will cost £250. This is much more expensive than the Kindle, which now costs $189 (approx. £150 inc VAT). We'll bring you a full review of the WiFi Story shortly.

Author: Jim Martin