Semi-announcement. PocketBook Viva and a new generation of electronic ink

PocketBook introduced its newreader PocketBook Viva. The announcement seems to be official, but the characteristics of the new device are far from complete (the dimensions, battery capacity, etc. are unknown). So let's call it a semi-announcement.

Mega-monopoly corporation E Ink continuesdevelop electronic ink technologies. And PocketBook Viva is the first E-Ink Gallery 3 color ink reader. The differences from previous generations of ink are as follows:

• From now on, both black and white text and color pictureshave the same resolution of 300 dpi. Previous generations of inks used a different technology that produced the same 300 ppi for all black and white, but only 100 ppi for color.
• The number of shades of color has grown from 4096 to "more than 50 thousand". I wonder if they mean 64K or something else?
• As usual, the speed of redrawing has grown and that's itsuch other. However, all this is clearly not enough to watch the video. But how the pages of the sites will look now and how convenient it will be to scroll through them is a very interesting question.

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The screen diagonal is 8″ (198 cm²). Resolution 1440×1920 (300 ppi). There is a backlight with adjustable color temperature.

Whether the touch screen is not specified, but rather yes than no. However, mechanical buttons for turning pages are also available.

Chipset brand and amount of RAMunknown. Something quad. By the standards of Android devices, of course, rather weak. But PocketBook, as far as I remember, still has something of its own, not Android.

A lot of permanent memory, 64 GB. Why so many? Don't know. Read color comics. Or children's picture books. Still, for reading a PDF, a screen of this size is frankly not enough.

Much space is given in the official press releasemusical and sound abilities of PocketBook Viva. There is a speaker, there is Bluetooth version as much as 5.2. There is a Type-C connector - you can probably plug something into it. Text-to-Speech, of course. However, to use an expensive ink device as not a reader, but a sound speaker is, in my opinion, a very strange decision.

Like some other devices from PocketBook,there is protection against water (but not against dust) according to IPX8 class. They promise that Viva will painlessly survive immersion in clean water for up to one hour. Yes, just clean. And only fresh, I suspect.

PocketBook Viva will go on sale at the end of the first quarter of 2023. They promise not the most humane price - €599 (₽40,000, $632).

Key Features of PocketBook Viva:

ScreenE-Ink, 8″, 198 cm², 1440 × 1920, 300 ppi, touch, capacitive, multi-touch, backlight, E-Ink Gallery 3, ComfortGaze
Iron4 cores
MemoryROM 64 GB
Battery Li-Pol
Sensors Accelerometer
USBType-C v2.0

George Kiselyov