China is probably the world's biggest manufacturer of various electronic devices, but, as we all know only too well, quite a large percentage of the products created here are either cheap knock-offs or, in the best-case scenario, "imitations" of similar items created by various important brands. And this is also the case with the Hanlin eReader V9, an e-book reader that doesn't really have that much going for it, but it's nevertheless fun to watch.
The device does provide some rather interesting features (at least when taking a look at the specs list), but it's rather difficult to estimate just how many of them actually work as promised. Thus, it would seem that the Hanlin eReader V9 uses ePaper (eInk technology), providing a resolution of around 825 x 1200 pixels, while the computing power is provided by 32 MB of SDRAM and a "Sumsang Arm 9 200Mhz" CPU (not sure whether this is yet another Chinese knock-off or actually a typo, with the device incorporating a Samsung 200 Mhz processor).
The eReader V9 also sports 64 MB of built-in NAND flash, but this rather puny internal memory can always be extended to 2 GB via an SD/MMC card slot. Furthermore, the manufacturers claim that their device, which runs the Wolf Linux distro (specifically designed for mobile devices), works with a very wide array of files, including here PDF, DOC, WOLF, HTML,JPG, TXT, CHM, RAR, ZIP, Images ETC. Oh, almost forgot, the reader also incorporates an USB 1.1 interface, for connecting to a host computer.
The device is a lot bulkier than the comparable products available on the market, as it measures around
255.8mm x 173.5mm x 14.3mm, at a weight of around 320 grams (including the battery). And since we're on the subject of batteries, the manufacturers say that they've equipped the V9 with a 950mAH rechargeable Li-Ion unit, but have failed to provide any significant information regarding the device's actual functioning time.
The funniest things about this device are not necessarily related to what it can offer, but rather to its minuses. Thus, the product's page lists as unavailable both communication functions and a touch panel, which is quite a serious minus, especially taking into account the fact that one of the most serious contestants on this emerging market segment, Amazon's Kindle, does provide all these features.
Oh, and another thing. The manufactures do point out that the expected release date has not yet been determined, which means that this thing can either arrive next month in a flea-market near you or never be launched at all (at least in its current incarnation).
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