Spring Design, the makers of the upcoming Alex e-reader, has recently announced that they are going to be partnering with Borders to offer e-books.
The Borders e-book store will have more than two million titles, all of which will be available to the Alex e-reader. This comes in comparison to the Amazon Library, which presently offers a mere 400,000. This could give Borders’ e-book store, and the relatively unknown Alex, a leg up on the famous Amazon Kindle.
Spring Design appears to be positive about the union with Borders, with chief executive officer Dr. Priscilla Lu saying, “The combination of Borders’ leadership in the book industry and Spring Design’s innovation and experience in consumer electronics will create a world class service for e-book readers.”
The Alex features two screens: a 6” E-Ink EPD display, and a 3.5” color LCD. This design affords buyers the readability of E-Ink, while offering the multimedia performance of an LCD. Images and hyperlinks from text content will automatically display on the lower LCD, in what Spring Design is calling the “Duet Navigator” dual-screen technology.
The LCD screen is an “integrated Android mobile device,” which will allow users to browse the web over WiFi or any place served by 3G (GSM or CDMA). The OS has been specifically tweaked to optimize battery life between the LCD and E-Ink screens, and users can manually move items between screens to further conserve power. Lastly, Alex will ship with a removable SD card, earphones and speakers.
Consumers can check out the Borders e-book store and the Alex for themselves when it goes to war with the Nook in retail on February 22 for $359.
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