Sony Reader Daily Edition first 3G and WiFi enabled ebook reader launched

So we’re skipping off to the British Library tomorrow and this is what we hope we’ll get to see – the Sony Reader Daily Edition. The new ebook reader has a 7in touchscreen and a built-in 3G modem to pull in content over the air.

Sony has announced that the Sony Reader Pocket Edition and Sony Reader Touch Edition ebook readers will be available in the UK. But while we like their 5in and 6in displays (and the Touch Edition’s touchscreen in particular), the Daily Edition is what’s really got us excited.

The Sony Reader Daily Edition is a seriously big deal with it’s built-in 3G putting it head-to-head with Amazon’s EVDO sporting Kindle to grab books and more importantly magazines and newspapers on the go.

In the US, the Sony Reader Daily Edition is going to be available for $399 with an AT&T 3G modem built-in. 3G access will be free and there’ll be a library service that allows you to borrow books for 29 days before they expire. That service will be available through public libraries in the US.

The British Library (one of three reference libraries in the UK – which means it gets a copy of every book published in this country) is the gem of British public libraries. Could Sony have chosen it as a venue for the event because we’re getting the library card ebook reader service too?

What we do know already is that the Sony Reader Pocket Edition and Sony Reader Touch Edition are compatible with the formats local libraries use for their ebook collections. But will we be getting a 3G connected device too?

The Sony Reader Daily Edition has a 7in wide touchscreen which can be flipped into landscape format to read newspaper and magazines.

In portrait mode, Sony says 30 to 35 lines of text are visible and there’s a seriously good 16 levels of grayscale to give crisp text and images.

We’re also quite taken with the aluminum body. The internal memory will swallow about 1000 standard ebooks but there are SD card slots to expand the capacity.

All three new Sony Readers use Sony’s eBook library software which now supports Apple Macs as well as PCs. You’ll also be able to stuff you’re new ebook reader with a fairly extensive selection of formats including PDFs, the open source EPUB format, Word files, BBeB files and a range of other text formats.

The Sony Reader Pocket Edition and Sony Reader Touch Edition are available for preorder from Sony Centres and www.sony.co.uk tomorrow but we’ve got no word on pricing yet. Expect full details on both new Readers tomorrow including pictures and video. And we’ve still got our fingers crossed for a UK version of the Sony Reader Daily Edition.

In the meantime check out what we thought of the previous incarnation of Sony’s Reader.