iriver Story HD : Google Ebook Reader

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iriver Story HD is the Google’s first dedicated e-Reader for Google eBooks. After launching Google+ last week giving strong competition to Facebook. Now its Amazon turn, today Google announced its own e-reader which will be available for sale in Target stores in the US and on Target.com starting this Sunday (July 17, 2011).

According to Google the iriver Story HD is the first e-reader integrated with the open Google eBooks platform, through which you can buy and read Google eBooks over Wi-Fi.

The iriver Story HD is being billed as the world’s highest resolution 6-inch ebook reader with crisp fonts, fast response and high performance with an advanced i.MX508 eReader applications processor from Freescale Semiconductor based on ARM® CortexTM technology and automatic, built-in Wi-Fi.

The iriver Story HD is slim and lightweight e-reader features a high-resolution (768 x 1024 ) e-ink screen, which means it has 63.8-percent more pixels than its rivals and  it has a QWERTY keyboard for easy searching, a curve with two-tone colors at the front and back for easy grip and slim design. The Story HD has buttons located from the side to the center of the keypad, featuring the up/down layout instead of the right/left design to make the unit more user-friendly than other eBooks – other models feature the right/left buttons for flipping page.

It includes over-the-air access to hundreds of thousands of Google eBooks for sale and more than 3 million for free.In addition to reading e-books from local storage, users will be able to read books directly via the Story HD’s WiFi connection without having to download the book to the device.

Another interesting feature of the device is, it has a 3-week battery life, making it ideal for travel, and supports Adobe EPUB and PDF formats with DRM.

“We built the Google eBooks platform to be open to all publishers, retailers and manufacturers, Manufacturers like iriver can use Google Books APIs and services to connect their devices to the full Google eBooks catalog for out-of-the-box access to a complete ebookstore, a Google spokesperson said in a statement”

The Kindle and the Nook have already established a steady foothold in the market, I think iriver Story HD will compete with them by offering a greater and more seamless link with Google’s ebook platform along with compatibility with a variety of formats.

iRiver’s Story HD e-book reader carry’s the same price tag—$140— as Amazon’s Kindle and device will be available for sale in Target stores starting July 17.