http://www.tweaktown.com Earlier on today we attended a Qualcomm
media roundtable in Taipei where we were introduced to a partner
product of theirs from a Korean bookstore company called Kyobo.
Kyobo is famous in Korea and its digital catalog includes some
90,000 titles including regular ebooks, children's books, video
books and video lectures. With almost a 100% literacy rate and an
aggressive government very keen on high levels of education and
parents with enough deposable income for youth learning gadgets,
Korea is a perfect market for Qualcomm to spread its wings and work
with its partners to bundle its mirasol display technology on
mobile products. The result of said above is the launch of the
first color e-reader featuring Qualcomm's mirasol display tech.
Mirasol is different to that of LCD, LED or plasma in that there
are no harmful chemicals used in the production of the display and
there is no back light, which some consider harmful to human eyes
over extended periods of use. Mirasol reflects natural ***t light
in your surrounding and uses it to create the color display. So,
you aren't going to get the same quality display as LCD, but
Qualcomm are not trying to compete with LCD and mirasol displays
use less power. This is only going to result in a device with
longer battery life at the end of the day. The Kyobo e-reader
features a 5.7-inch display with a 1024 x 768 resolution and is
powered by Qualcomm's 1GHz Snapdragon S2 processor. By default it
ships with Android 2.3 and a select few Android apps. It is able to
provide basic web surfing with built-in Wi-Fi and it supports
standard definition video playback up to 40 frames per second. As
mentioned by Qualcomm, it's important to remember this device is
not a tablet and was never designed to be. It is a device designed
for students which offers adequate educational interactivity in my
opinion. It is already on sale now in Korea for $349,000 KRW ($310
USD) and if you are a member of the Kyobo Pl