14 DAY TRIAL // The e-reader market has grown to remarkable large proportions over the past half a year. Not much prior to the end of 2009, there was less than a handful such electronics on sale. Now, on the other hand, the IT market is brimming and more models keep coming out. iRiver is one of the outfits who deals in this sort of product. Thus, it is hardly a surprise to see it eager to expand its offer, especially when a new device gets a special capability over its predecessor.
What iRiver will reportedly soon do is launch the successor to the Story e-reader, which finally became more or less widely available some time ago, after being limited to the confines of the Korean market. That device has a QWERTY keyboard and support for a wide range of e-book formats. The new iteration, however, will drop this physical means of input in favor of one more direct and smooth.
The Story Touch Edition, as it is called, will, obviously, be equipped with a touch panel. What this means is that the 6-inch display will possess touch recognition. The side effect that the company decided to allow was the disappearance of the aforementioned QWERTY keyboard. Other than that, nothing much appears to have changed. The Story still has a SDHC card slot and 2GB of onboard storage, as well as an accelerometer that automatically adjusts resolution. A stylus will also be provided, as will built-in stereo speakers and a microphone. As for content support, the company threw in recognition for ePub, PDF,CBZ and DJVU ebooks, as well as MP3 OGG and WMA audio files and, finally, office files (DOC, DOCX, PPT, XLS and XLXS Office files).
Unfortunately, the Story may have a hard time of shaking off the competition because there doesn't seem to be any trace of built-in wireless connectivity. Pricing and availability are, likewise, not mentioned.