Like the Amazon Kindle family of e-readers, the Sony Reader Touch Edition uses an e-Ink e-paper display. But it’s interface works like a touchscreen. The advance is a major improvement for the standards of design in e-paper e-book readers. The touchscreen standard may be the most significant challenge Sony has put forth for the Amazon Kindle readers, none of which uses a touchscreen interface.
The Kindle readers have been the iconic popular leader of the transition from paper to e-paper for the consumer bookselling market. The Kindle DX is the first widely available large-format e-reader that is optimized for more comfortable reading of text-books and news publications, where imagery is more important in connection with text. Sony’s Daily Edition is also a large-format e-paper reader that is aimed at the daily-update newspaper and weekly magazine market.
The advent of touchscreen technology for e-paper is a serious challenge to the paradigm of static non-lit, non-motive e-paper. The Touch Edition’s main problem is that contrast is reported to be lower than with non-touch e-Ink displays and there is added glare, due to a side-lighting feature that is atypical of e-paper standards.
The use of touchscreen for e-paper may need careful consideration. There remains the fundamental goal of low energy consumption, static non-backlit display, and paper-mimicking features. In this light, the only features that would make sense for touch-enabled interface would be highlighting or underlining, dictionary look-up, page-flipping and basic menu navigation.