The Ultimate E-Reader

Skiff Reader: The Ultimate E-Reader | If you bought an Amazon Kindle DX in 2009, prepare for a heavy dose of buyer’s remorse.  The Skiff Reader has overtaken the Amazon Kindle DX as the largest e-reader on the market, but its size isn’t what makes the Skiff so special.  The Skiff Reader brings two new technologies to the large-scale e-reader market: a touchscreen e-ink display and “silicon thin-film-transistors on a flexible steel substrate”.

The Skiff Reader pushes the e-reader standard by featuring a full touchscreen display spanning 11.5-inches.  The Amazon Kindle DX and smaller Kindle models don’t feature touchscreen e-ink, neither does that Barnes and Noble Nook (while the latter has an LCD touchscreen below the e-ink portion).  This provides a new, finger-friendly world of navigation as you flip pages, highlight and select content modules and skim through your favorite ebooks.

The “silicon thin-film-transistors” technology is a bit more esoteric.  In short, the technology used in the Skiff Reader makes it flexible– meaning it can bend and warp on a whim, giving it a more durable and rugged build in contrast to those crackable Kindles.  The Skiff uses a metal foil design that merges with the thin film transistors to fit into a low-profile shape, in this case just a quarter-inch in thickness.

The Skiff reader is coming later this year, available at Sprint retail outlets and using the Sprint 3G network.  While it’ll be some time until Skiff hits the streets, we can already hear the nervous hustle of the e-reader market trying its hardest to catch up.