The Amazon Kindle 2 was a wonderful device. The features of this device is that it is light, compact, easy to use, good battery life and excellent display which made the e-book reading device an on the spot favorite with book lovers universal. Many of them thought that the next generation of Kindle will have a touch screen interface and color display. But clearly Amazon had other ideas, so the new Kindle came out.
The new Kindle is more compact and slim. Amazon says that size has been reduced by 21 percent while the weight has gone down by 15 percent. It is now even more pocket friendly than ever before and has evolved into a device that can be carried at all times anywhere.
Among the other changes introduced in the new Kindle, the sliding power button along with the volume button and the headphone jack has now been included at the bottom of the unit. Then the side buttons too have undergone transformation and are now a quarter of an inch wide. Also they carry the arrow symbols now denoting forward and back instead of words.
With 4 GB internal memory it is now good enough to gobble up almost 3,500 books, almost twice that of the Kindle 2. Three new fonts are included in the new Kindle – Condensed, Serif, and Sans Serif while also allows three setting for the line spacing that range from small, medium, and large. The new Kindle also come with much improved PDF handling capabilities. Like PDF files can now be viewed in landscape mode or can be zoomed 300 percent. Other standard Kindle features like notes, highlights, and the dictionary have now been extended to work on PDFs as well while one can now also password protect PDF files. There is also the feature to even increase the darkness of PDF texts.
It will now read aloud such things like content listings on the home screen, item descriptions, as well as all the menu options available as the text-to-speech feature has been extended to include the menu options. in addition to all these a new browser is included and “experimental” which is incredibly fast and works amazingly well. A unique feature of the WebKit browser is the “article mode” that allows it to display pages as plain text optimized for reading. One benefit of this is it focuses on the main content of the page which it presents for easy reading as an article while removing the ads or extra columns. Then the new Kindle has also been made more exciting by the inclusion of interactive games like Scrabble.
The text-to-speech feature has been extended to include the menu options as well, something that will be liked by the visually impaired the most as it will now read aloud such things like content listings on the home screen, item descriptions, as well as all the menu options available. Also a new browser included and “experimental” it might be but the fact is, it’s incredibly fast and works surprisingly well. A unique feature of the WebKit browser is the “article mode” that allows it to display pages as plain text optimized for reading. One benefit of this is it focuses on the main content of the page which it presents for easy reading as an article while removing the ads or extra columns. Then the new Kindle has also been made more exciting by the inclusion of interactive games like Scrabble.
Still the display continues to be of 6 inches. All of these have made reading off the screen a dream and has been achieved by the use of new e-ink Pearl screen that allow 50 percent more contrast. Also, since it’s still e-ink screen, there is no back lighting involved. On the one hand this is a boon as this allows for the utmost pleasure inducing reading experience with any strain caused to the eye being just negligible at best. The screen will also allow one to read in bright sunlight with equal ease. However things take a different turn as light begins to fade for e-ink screens are at their best only in the presence of an external light source. So if you wish to continue reading into the night without disturbing your partner, you can procure a protective cover marketed by Kindle that includes a retracting LED light. The light, which draws power from the Kindle remains unobtrusive and has been brilliantly designed. On the flip side, it costs a rather high $59.99.
For the battery can continuously keep things going for an impressive 10 to 14 days on a single charge with the Wi-Fi turned on. Turn the Wi-Fi off and battery life will double to four weeks. However, the battery is sealed with the device and is not user replaceable. So in the unlikely scenario of your battery ever getting fizzled out, the entire device will have to be sent to Amazon for the needful.
There is no revolutionary stuff in the new kindle it is just evolved from its predecessor. More so if the price too is accounted for: $139 for the Wi-Fi only version or $189 for the Kindle with 3G. The new Kindle is available in Graphite and White.
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