Entourage Edge

Entourage Edge is a revolutionary device with two screens making it a Tablet as well as an e-Reader. Powered by Android it costs only $499 and has students as the target audience. The dual screen can be flipped close but has different screen dimensions for Tablet as well as the ebook reader. This Ebook reader is 9.7 inch (1200 x 825-pixel) diagonally whereas the Android Tablet is 10.1 inch diagonally. Compared to other ebook readers, it is three times thick, large and three pound heavier than kindle. Both the screens can be reverse clamshelled to keep it back to back (though have no idea what purpose it serves). Few of the features are mentioned below.

• It comes with number of ports i.e two USB, a micro-USB, mic and headphone jacks, and SIM and SD card slots.
• It incorporates a 2-megapixel camera on top of the LCD screen.
• Performance wise it’s just mediocre with the Marvell Armada PXA168 processor which can keep few browser tabs open and can play some music in the background. Also it becomes a bit sluggish when backtracking through menus.
• WiFi browsing speed is decent and it comes with a SIM slot on the top of the device.
• With WiFi and both screens turned on, the battery of Edge lasts approximately four hours. Also on closing the device it doesn’t have the facility to go to sleep just like any notebook. But this apparently might get fixed in the first firmware update.
• Just like the other ebook readers with e-ink technology it also takes fairly long time to refresh while turning pages (through physical forward and backward buttons) and zooming in on text. Due to this the writing experience is also laggy and therefore takes about a second delay until the text shows up.
• As per the touch interface, it’s pretty easy to underline/highlight text, jotting down notes in the margin or in a separate journal page.
• Also a page or Journal document can be marked as a PDF and then can be easily transferred to the adjacent LCD screen for its manipulations.
• The Android audio recorder uses the Edge’s dual microphones which are a bit noisy on recording but conversations can be clearly made out.
• Books can be bought and downloaded over the air from the Entourage Edge store but the selection is lacking drastically compared to book stores like Amazon or Barnes & Noble’s. As per Entourage there are over 225,000 trade books, 65 current New York Times best sellers and over 1,500 newspapers in its store. Once a book is downloaded the Edge automatically puts it in the library and will open it on the E Ink display.
• It can also read the free format ePub (just like the iPad or Sony ebook reader).
• It also comes loaded with an SD slot and a 4GB onboard memory.
• The standard Android 1.6 apps are present in the Entourage with Docs to Go but unfortunately the Edge doesn’t support the Android Marketplace therefore no downloading of Android applications.
• The home screen comes with a nice shortcut bar with the icons pointing to the library, bookstore, browser and e-mail.

In the end it can be said that the Edge is a unique combination of e-reader and an Android tablet though both of them doesn’t blend well together as each operates almost individually. For a price of $499 an iPad might seem to be lucrative option. The size and weight of the device also pose a big issue as it doesn’t seem fare enough to carry a device which might weigh similar to a notebook. In such cases notbooks might win over functionality. Over and all it’s a good start with a nice concept to go with and might become a potential iPad killer in future.