Kindle DX WiFi

Kindle DX was taken apart by RapidRepair.com recently. Kindle Zen took a closer look at these photos and suggested that Kindle DX’s PCB is wired for WiFi chipset and antennae. It’s quite possible that Amazon would sell WiFi Kindles in countries where it will not be able to reach an agreement with wireless operators. In the past Jesse Vincent speculated about possibility of 9.7″ Kindle based on Kindle source code and was right.

I wouldn’t hold my breath any time soon about WiFi in US version of Kindle because that would be a completely new device and Amazon has already released two during last three months. This caused some anger among Kindle 2 users who felt that their devices almost immediately became outdated when Kindle DX was released.

If any of you were wondering what new features would be included in the device that will replace Kindle 2 – watch this video.

According to Adam and his friends, Kindle 3 will boast the following features:

• Reading has never been easier – with new hardware interface you can now read entire Lord Of The Rings trilogy in under 9 hours.
• Stunning 3d visuals
• High-Definition Surround Sound Home Library ™
• High-Resolution Wide Screen
• Plays movies instead of books :)

Too bad it’s still long time until 1st of April. I couldn’t hold on to this post until the next year… :)

Amazon Kindle DX Leather Cover

I’ve decided to have another date guessing contest here on BlogKindle.com. This time it’s about guessing the release date of Amazon Kindle DX.

The rules are quite simple: pick a date and send an email to contest@blogkindle.com with the date in the subject line in the following format: MM/DD/YYYY. So 4th of July 2009 would correspond to 07/04/2009. Please be careful about the date format as I use automated means for selecting winners. This means that if you get the date right but write it wrong you can not win.

I’ll randomly choose a winner from all the people who correctly guess Kindle DX release date or among those who guess the closest.

Rather than setting a specific deadline for submissions I’ll set the following rule: winners will only be chosen from entries submitted at least 7 days before the date is officially announced. When is it going to happen? I don’t know :) But I believe it’s more fun this way. So technically it’s possible that the date would be announced 5 minutes after this post gets published and no entries would be eligible. Oh, well…

The prize would be Amazon Kindle DX Leather Cover that would go nicely with your Amazon Kindle DX once it’s released.

I’ll never use your email addresses for any other purpose than contacting the winner. People who participated in the previous contest can testify to that being true – except for the lucky winner, none ever heard from me.

If you like the idea of this contest you can help by letting other people know about it and this blog.

Remember me speculating about 9.7″ screen in Kindle 3? Well, the only difference is that it’s called Kindle DX!

Today Amazon announced availability of Kindle DX: Amazon’s 9.7″ Wireless Reading Device. It will start shipping sometime this summer and is available for pre-order now. As I’ll definitely would like to write a hands-on review of it I’m preordering one right now…

2 major differences in Kindle DX compared to Kindle 2 are: 9.7″ 16 shades of gray eInk screen that runs at 1200×824 resolution and native PDF support. Other notable new features include iPhone-like auto-rotate and  flash-memory upgraded to 3.3 gigabytes.

Kindle DX is actually much anticipated “Kindle textbook edition”. According to Wall Street Jounal Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland along with 5 other universities will start piloting Kindle DX as a universal textbook. With 4 major textbook publishers (Addison Wiley, Prentice Hall, Person and Longman) on-board long with several smaller ones it’s expected that Kindle DX will have 60% of textbooks available when it ships. Larger screen would also be a bonus to people who are used to reading regular newspapers.

Here are all features and specifications of Kindle DX that I could dig up so far:

• Size: 10.4″ x 7.2″ x 0.38″ (Kindle 2: 8″ x 5.3″ x 0.36″)
• Display: 16 shades of gray eInk 9.7″ 1200×824 pixels (Kindle 2: 6″ 800×600)
• Weight: 18.9oz (Kindle 2: 10.2oz)
• Storage: 3.3GB (Kindle 2: 1.4GB)
• Battery life: 4 days with 3G modem on, 2 weeks with modem off (really it’s limited just by the number of page turns). This is pretty much the same as Kindle 2
• Connectivity: 3G wireless modem, USB 2.0 port and 3.5mm audio jack

Jesse Vincent who spends a lot of his time hacking Kindle 2 and digging around it’s source code has discovered something potentially interesting:

from rcS.d/S05video_primary_init:

_PANEL_SIZE_6_0_INCH=6
_PANEL_SIZE_9_7_INCH=9

Does this mean that folks in lab126 are playing around with larger screens for next generation Kindle 3? Could be… There are some rumours circulating the web about next generation Amazon Kindle possibly being available this fall (holiday season 2009).

I promise to collect more rumors about Kindle 3, verify them, crosscheck and post a summary here soon enough.