Even now, weeks after the initial release of the Amazon’s(NASDAQ:AMZN) Kindle 3 began to arrive on peoples’ doorsteps, there is certainly no unanimous opinion on the quality of the release.  It’s worth taking a closer look at what precisely is being said, in both the highly positive and highly negative reviews, to determine how much they are likely to effect you.  As is my habit when shopping for new products on my own, I’ll start with the negatives.  After all, it’s always nice to know the potential pitfalls in any device, no matter how unlikely!

Kindle 3 Negative Reviews

Beginning at the bottom and working our way up, there are clearly some trends.  One-Star reviews on the Kindle page seem to center on just about three areas, assuming that we’re safe in skipping the complainers who write negative reviews for a product based on it taking too long to get to their house or the fact that they forgot to check to see how much international importation would cost in customs.

1.  Defective Units

As with any product launch, we can expect some problems.  The most vocal will always be those who were the most disappointed.  In this case, it is definitely true that dozens of people received their Kindles in only semi-functional condition due to broken antennae, battery issues, and even broken screens.  What seems to be universally true, however, is that reviewers who have taken the time to follow up have confirmed that Amazon gladly took the bad units back for either refunds or replacements after walking through a small number of steps to troubleshoot and confirm the problems.

2.  Korean Font Issues

It seems that Amazon didn’t choose the best possible option in its default Korean font.  It has been described as blocky, childish, hard on the eyes, difficult to read for any length of time, and just plain ugly.  To the best of my knowledge, this complaint has gone unaddressed as of yet.  It seems likely that it will take at least until the next software patch to get any work done here, so Korean users might be sadly out of luck for the moment as far as default Kindle software goes at the moment.

3.  Software Shortcomings

I’ll be honest, most of this could well come under the category of defective units.  There are a number of users, though by no means a majority, who have been experiencing issues with frequent locking and rebooting for no apparent reason.  These are likely unit failures, given how many reviewers have been offered exchanges, but it’s a pattern to be aware of just in case.  Also, many seem to feel that the PDF support remains insufficient.  Long load times of image-heavy and/or large files have been reported, as well as unwieldy navigation of zoomed documents.  My personal experience does not bear this out, but different people have different expectations or even perhaps still more malfunctioning units given that many of these reviewers simultaneously complain of frequent reboots being required.

Kindle 3 Positive Reviews

In spite of these issues, there is no shortage of praise to be found.  Even without filtering out the many people who have marked down the product for simply not shipping fast enough, the Kindle‘s favorable(4-5 Star) reviews stand at just short of four times the number of all the rest put together as of my writing this.  We’ve already touched on some of these here on the site in our earlier “Kindle 3 Positive Reviews Summary“, but there are a few things to add that really bring it home for a lot of people.

1.  Advertised Features

Yeah, I know, they were right on the packaging.  What did we expect?  The fact is, however, that many people have been taken aback by how much better things like the new screens and WebKit experimental browser are than were originally expected.  I won’t go into this, there are enough ads floating around to find out many details and we’ve certainly talked about new features here enough so far, but these reviews bear out the idea that exaggeration was not a problem on the new Kindle.

2. Setting a New Standard

For many eBook enthusiasts, especially among the early adopter crowd, the Sony PRS-505 set the standard for eReaders until this time.  In terms of weight, durability, screen quality, software, etc, it was simply the best to be had.  Ignore later Sony models, seriously.  According to many reviews, including at least one very well written direct comparison, the only remaining point of shortcoming for the Kindle is the lack of ePub compatibility.  These sorts of comparisons are amazingly valuable for both eBook fanatics and newcomers since they tend to pare down the block of seemingly new and amazing features to what is really going to end up being important over the course of years of use.  If a functional Kindle is now noticeably better than the device that has long been the fallback for users “in the know”, it’s impressive.

3.  The Feel

Now that it’s shrunk down, in terms of size and weight, the Kindle is even more like your average paperback in terms of size and experience.  People are noticing.  If you’ve been on the fence because you’d miss the feel of your favorite book too much, it might finally be time to give it a try.  No more wrist strain, page turn delay that is far less than turning an actual page would be, and a screen that is no longer significantly distinguishable from a paper book in terms of contrast?  Little room for complaint.

Final Verdict

Honestly, I’ll leave that to you.  It is definitely possible to say that this is the best time yet to be buying an eBook reader.  Is the new Kindle sufficiently great to be worth upgrading from the previous generation or your Nook?  Dunno.  Is it good enough for a first eReader?  I’d say it’s an obvious yes, but I’m writing a blog about eReaders so there’s an implied partiality in what I have to say anyway.  Click a link, check the reviews for yourself, maybe ask a few questions if you need to.  I think most people will be pleased.

Picture is worth a thousand words so rather than writing one more Kindle 3 Review (which I encourage you to read if you haven’t already), today I decided to publish several Kindle 3 photos.

eReader Comparison: Kindle 2, Nook, iPad, Kindle 1, Kindle 3, Kindle DX, Sony PRS-600

Personally I’m a huge eReader fan and gadget geek as you can see from my pile of eInk hardware. Out of all devices Kindles get the most use: 6″ devices to read books and Kindle DX to read newspapers and magazines. iPad is also used quite a bit but mostly not as eBook reader.

Amazon Kindle 3

Kindle 3 frontal shot. Kindle has a picture viewer easter egg. In order to use it: create “pictures” folder in the root directory of the Kindle USB drive, create some sub-directory there and fill it with pictures. Once in home screen, press Alt-Z to make Kindle 3 rescan picture folders. Subfolders of “pictures” folder that have JPEG, GIF, PNG or BMP files in them will be visible as books and images will become pages. It may be a nice way to enjoy manga on your Kindle 3.

Kindle 3 Back Cover

Kindle 3 back cover has a nice rubbery feel to it that makes the device very comfortable to hold. I has Amazon Kindle logo embossed in it. If you look closely at the slit between front and back covers you will be able to see screwdriver marks from my Kindle 3 disassembly attempt.

Kindle 3 Weight

For some reason Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) has overstated Kindle 3 weight. It really weights around 8.2 ounces as opposed to the official spec of 8.7 as confirmed by multiple sources.

Kindle 3 in Lighted Leather Cover

…

Kindle 3 Light

One of the standard Kindle 3 accessories that Amazon sells separately is Kindle 3 Leather Lighted Cover. It is intended to protect your Kindle from scratches and falls. Although I’ve never field-tested it, judging by it’s solid construction it should do a good job. It also has a built-in LED light for night reading that draws power from Kindle battery via conductive cover hinges. The downside is that the cover doubles the weight of the device.

As you can see, page lighting is not completely even. However from my personal experience I can tell that the cover is completely usable for reading at night. DSLR cameras tend to exaggerate contrast.

Kindle 3 in Leather Cover

When not in use the light slides into the cover and stays completely hidden. There is also leather cover without built in light that costs less and is couple of ounces lighter.

Kindle 3 Power Light

Amazon designers have moved all buttons (except for paging) and connectors to the bottom edge of the device. From left to right you see volume control (for two built-in 1W stereo speaker or headphones used for “Read To Me” text-to-speech feature, listening audiobooks or DRM-free MP3 files), stereo mini-jack headphone connector, microphone (that is not used for anything right now according to the user’s guide), standard micro-USB PC/charging connector, power switch with integrated large charging LED light. The light blinks green when Kindle 3 is turned on or off, glows orange when Kindle is charging and glows green when the device is completely charged.

Kindle 1,2 and 3 side by side

Witness 3 years of Kindle evolution. Kindle 1 released on the 19th of November 2007, Kindle 2 releaed on the 9th of February 2009 and finally Kindle 3 Graphite released recently. Notice the improving progression of screen contrast as eInk displays evolved over time.

Kindle 3 and Kindle 1 side by side

…

Kindle 3 vs Kindle 1 - thickness comparison

Although Kindle 3 and Kindle 1 have very similar footprint in the terms of thickness, Kindle 3 is almost 3 times thinner than the original first generation Kindle.

Kindle 3 and Kindle 2 size comparison

…

Kindle 3 vs Kindle 2 - thickness comparison

Although K3 and K2 are almost indistinguishable by thickness (the difference is 1/50 inch), difference by footprint is considerable.

Kindle 3 and Kindle DX

As you can see Kindle 3 completely fits inside Kindle DX screen with still some room to spare. These are two different classes of devices.

Kindle 3 vs Nook - Size overlay

…

Kindle 3 vs Nook : Thickness comparison

…

Kindle 3 vs Barnes and Noble Nook side by side

Kindle 3 is slightly smaller than Barnes & Noble Nook. It is also almost twice at thin and significantly lighter while packing same 3G + WiFi connectivity. In case of Kindle 3 however you can use free 3G Internet to browse any website rather than just download books.

Kindle 3 and Sony PRS-600 Touch Edition side-by-side

…

Kindle and Sony PRS-600 Touch Edition - Thickness

Kindle 3 has slightly larger footprint than Sony PRS-600 because of keyboard but is slightly thinner and considerably lighter. However the main difference is in display contrast. Kindle 3 Pearl eInk display contrast is almost 5 times higher than that of Sony. This difference has mostly to do with the touchscreen layer in PRS-600.

Kindle 3 vs Apple iPad

Although these are completely different kinds of products I still photographed Kindle 3 and Apple iPad side-by-side just for the fun of it.

I’ll wrap up this Kindle photo review with a daily Amazon.com user review and shipping date check-up:

Right now there are 220 customer reviews for Kindle 3. Of these 155 are completely positive five star reviews, 35 – positive four star reviews, 6 – neutral 3 star reviews, 7 – negative two star reviews and finally 17 – completely negative one star reviews. For the last several days ship date for Kindle 3 remained unchanged as “on or before September 17th”.

BTW: I have plenty of hosting bandwidth so you are welcome to hotlink these pictures.

In case you haven’t read Kindle 3 reviews I’ve published before, here they are:

• Original Kindle 3 review (July, 29th) - largely based on official Amazon press release and personal speculations.
• Kindle 3 review round-up from online media (August, 6th) – summary of opinions from sources.
• Kindle 3 review (August, 28th) – my personal hand-on review of the device with battery life estimations, screen contrast comparison, partial disassembly and other useful bits of information.
• Kindle 3 review follow-up (August, 29th) – some minor things I forgot to mention in the original review, comparative screenshot of different typefaces of Cyrillic characters and in-depth look at some of the negative reviews on Amazon.com

This time around I would like to focus on positive Kindle 3 reviews people left on Amazon.com so far. There are 151 positive reviews on Amazon.com out of 168 total reviews right now. Of these 151 reviews, 124 gave Kindle five out of five stars.

Reviews are split almost equally between Kindle 3G + WiFi and Kindle WiFi Only so both versions sell equally well.

I have read though most of the reviews and compiled some numbers which indicate what users like about Kindle 3.

Screen seems to be the biggest hit as it’s mentioned 150 times in all of the reviews. While people who previously owned eReaders mostly note the improved contrast, those who didn’t have eInk device before are very enthusiastic about how comfortable it is for prolonged reading.

Next big thing is the size. There are 94 mentions of how small the device is. Again this aspect is equally appreciated by both long time eBook reader adepts and new converts.

After that comes improved browser with 68 mentions. In this case, positive feedback is mostly in the form of comparing to Kindle 2 “basic web”.

Surprisingly only there are only 43 mentions of weight.

Then come 39 mentions of WiFi, which mostly note speed improvement over previous generation 3G connection and different font options.

There are very few mentions of magazines and newspapers in these reviews (only 7 and 8 correspondingly). Reviewers don’t seem to care much for this aspect of Amazon Kindle. Although personally I never liked dead-tree paper newspapers because they were bulky and messy and get most of my news from online sources it’s still nice to relax and read a well written article in WSJ without the temptation clicking on any of the gazillion links that websites offer.

Here are some quotes from specific reviews that you can check out:

Kindle vs. Nook:

If you’re trying to choose between a nook and a kindle, perhaps I can help. My wife and I bought a nook, a kindle 2, and a kindle DX last month, just days before the kindle 3 was announced. After using them intensively for a few weeks, we returned them and pre-ordered two kindle 3′s, which we have in our hands now. We’ve each read a few chapters and a few newspaper articles on our kindle 3′s and are very happy with them, so far.

K3 is perfect:

The size is absolutely perfect. In the Amazon cover, it is exactly like reading from a paperback book. It’s noticeably lighter and easier to hold for reading, even with arthritis in my hands. The page turn buttons are wonderful. Almost no noise, and you don’t have to push them as hard. It should make it much easier for those with weak or disabled hands. I also like have next page and previous buttons on both sides. I didn’t think it would make a difference to me, but it really does.

K3 Even Better than its Predecessor:

My wife and I share a last gen 6″ Kindle and just received a new 6″ display K3. I know, Amazon doesn’t call it that, but how else can users refer to it? In twenty words or less, it is an improvement over an already excellent product. Smaller, but not too small to be held comfortably. Same size display, but sharper and crisper, better contrast. Easy to use, somewhat smaller keyboard that takes a little, but very little, getting used to. It took me a few hours to stop accidentally pressing some neighboring keys, but now using the keyboard is second nature. And the page turning buttons are silent, but have sufficient tactile feedback, excellent feel.

Enjoy!

Kindle 3 Weight

I’ve had some time to play around with my new Kindle 3 and to read what other users are saying so now I’m ready to publish this follow up with some of the information I’ve recently gathered of forgot to publish before.

In case you haven’t read reviews I’ve published before, here they are:

• Original Kindle 3 review (July, 29th) - largely based on official Amazon press release, other online sources and personal speculations.
• Kindle 3 review round-up from online media (August, 6th) – summary of opinions from sources like CNET, PCWorld etc.
• Kindle 3 review (August, 28th) – my personal hand-on review of the device with battery life estimations, screen contrast comparison, partial disassembly and other useful bits of information.

One thing I would like to mention specifically is the weight. I weighted the device on a digital scale it showed 8.2 oz. At first I though that my scale was off but then reports and pictures started surfacing on forums indicating that Kindle 3G + WiFi weights as low as 8.1 oz and Kindle WiFi as low as 7.8 oz. Official Amazon specs indicate 8.7 oz for 3G + WiFi and 8.2 oz for WiFi only version.

Kindle 3 software

Kindle 3 runs software version 3.0 (515460094) and has serial number starting with B006 marking it as new hardware series. No surprise there. In the past Amazon has stopped updating 1.* firmware for first generation Kindles once Kindle 2 came out. Hopefully this is not going to be the case with Kindle software 2.* despite the fact that apparently Kindle 3 will clearly outsell Kindle 2 soon enough (more on that later).

Kindle 3 is much more similar to second generation Kindle than Kindle 2 was to original Kindle 1. Kindle 2 user base now is much larger than Kindle 1 user base was when Kindle 2 came out. It would be easier for Amazon to maintain one code branch than two (since it seems that 1.* software development is essentially non-existent). Unicode characters have been added to 3.0 software. Eventually books in Kindle store will start using these characters. It would be very bad PR for Amazon when people with older Kindles will start buying these books only to see empty boxes instead of characters. This is why I guesstimate that eventually 3.* software will make it to Kindle 2 and older Kindle DX devices. Perhaps it would be software 3.1 or 3.0.1

There are several new features in Kindle software 3.0 that I forgot to mention in the original review:

• Device password. You can set a password that will be required to use the device every time it’s turned on. Without the password it’s impossible to access Kindle UI or Kindle USB drive. It’s pretty useful if you keep sensitive work related documents on your Kindle. In case you forget your password, it is possible to completely reset the device deleting all stored information in the process.
• Collections. Although these are not exactly new and have been around before Kindle 3, I’ve never taken the time to write about them and would like to point this feature out. Historically all Kindle books were piled in one flat list that was sorted by last-read date, title or author. Best way to navigate it was searching. Several months ago Amazon has introduced collections as a way to organize your library. A collection is similar to a tag as one book can belong to several collections (Sci-Fi, H. G. Wells, “Favorite Books”, etc)
• Manually setting device time. Previously Kindle relied on time information from 3G wireless network. Now you can manually set Kindle clock if you have WiFi-only version, don’t have wireless coverage or live on a different time than your GSM provider.

Kindle 3 Unicode support

Kindle 3 finally got a font with broader range of Unicode characters. These include Cyrillic, Simplified and Traditional Chinese, Korean and Japanese. I’ve done some quick tests and to me it looks like characters are there. However I didn’t do a full scale test of all possible characters from these planes. Some people on forums and in comments complained about poor support of Chinese and Korean but so far there has been little specifics.

There were some claims that non-Latin characters display the same in all typefaces. I’ve verified it and it does seem to be true for Asian characters and definitely not true for Cyrillic. Here are some screenshots showing different typefaces in Russian text.

Kindle 3 Russian Typefaces

By the way, good way to download and format Unicode text files so that paragraph breaks would display properly and lines will not needlessly wrap is eBook Text Formatter tool that I’ve created a while ago. It still works great.

Kindle 3 WebKit-based browser

New web-browser in Kindle 3 is great. It can event load and run desktop AJAX version of Gmail (however using mobile version at https://m.gmail.com/ is still recommended as it’s much faster). Some users reported problems with browser or apps. Kindle software would occasionally crash. It is generally believed that it’s caused by background indexing process running alongside browser. Whenever new book, text file or document is downloaded to Kindle, it is indexed to provide almost instantaneous search results. This process is resource intensive and may conflict with web-browser or word game applications that are available for Kindle.

Therefore it is recommended to refrain from browsing while Kindle indexes new books. Usually this process is completed within minutes of downloading a book or a document. If you download hundreds of books at once it may take hours and seriously drain your battery. 75% overnight battery drain has been reported after downloading 100+ books.

In case your Kindle browser stops working completely (“launch browser” button does nothing or causes a crash), restarting your Kindle will fix this problem. To restart your Kindle press “Home”, “Menu”, select “Settings”, press “Menu” and select “Restart”. In case this doesn’t work, holding the power button for 30 seconds and then releasing it does the trick. Please note that Kindle will not restart while you are holding the button. You need to press the button, slowly count to 30 and then release it. Within several seconds your Kindle will reboot.

Kindle 3 User Reviews

For some reason there were no user reviews for Kindle 3 on Amazon website until Saturday afternoon. Perhaps they were held in the pipeline for some reason. Now that reviews are finally in, you can check them out here.

For Kindle 3G + WiFi and Kindle WiFi there are 139 total reviews at the moment. Of these 104 gave Kindle 5/5 stars, 24 gave it 4 stars, 3 gave it 3 stars and 8 people were completely unhappy with their purchase and gave Kindle 3 one star. Since there so few one-star reviews, I took a look at them individually and here’s the scoop:

I would like to start completely quoting review by Roger: “The ipad has so much more functionality, why anyone would want to limit themselves to a Kindle is beyond me.” It doesn’t look to me like Roger ever had or will have a Kindle. Nonetheless he’s entitled to his own opinion and we’ll leave it at that :)

3 people seemed to have received defective devices. I can understand how this can lead to a bad review, however every device has a potential of being defective. When I started building servers of the first batch of 8 HDDs from a major manufacturer 3 failed within 24 hours of stress testing. Bad luck, I guess because since I replaced these 3 and installed dozens more like them I’m yet to see a single hard drive fail. So given the overall volume of Kindles shipped, 3 reviews about defective devices is pretty good.

One reviewer was extremely unhappy with quality of Korean font glyphs. Kindle 3 Unicode support is something that I want to investigate further. I’ll definitely report on it once I have the full story.

There is one bad Kindle 3 review dealing with new smaller buttons. Personally I liked Kindle 2 buttons more as well. New controller layout takes getting used to and judging by scarcity of negative reviews, benefits like WiFi and better screen greatly outweigh discomfort from smaller buttons. By the way there is a good old trick for reading from Kindle without having to use buttons at all: start text-to-speech, adjust the speech speed to your reading speed and then mute the volume. Pages will flip automatically.

User with “Book Worm” alias gave new Kindle 3 one star because he purchased Kindle 2 right before Kindle 3 was announced so the user ended up paying $259 for and older device rather than getting new one for $189. I can completely understand this frustration. Unfortunately Amazon doesn’t have a specific schedule of “surprise” product launches like Apple when everyone expects new iPhone to be announced in Spring and release in the Summer. Such things happened in the past when international Kindle or graphite Kindle DX was released. While it’s unlikely that anything can be done in this particular case, I would like to note that historically Amazon Customer support was quite flexible on 30-day return period. According to comments from several users you can get a refund (if the price dropped) or return your Kindle for a newer one up to one week after 30 days have passed from your purchase. But please don’t tell Amazon that I told you this :)

Final bad Kindle 3 review has something to do with the way user set up his/her account rather than with the device itself so I’ll not comment on it.

For these 8 negative reviews there are 128 positive reviews from people who are mostly extremely happy with their Kindle experience. Some highlights include:

• Small size and weight are mentioned in almost every positive review (and even some negative onces)
• Improved screen contrast and fonts is the second biggest thing mentioned in positive reviews.
• People love new low $189 price point of Kindle 3G + WiFi and $139 of Kindle WiFi.

In the future I’ll do a more detailed analysis of positive reviews and publish the stats here.

Kindle 3 Sales Numbers

On August 25th in the press release announcing early shipments of Kindle 3, Amazon also revealed that Kindle 3 is the best-selling product by four-week sales:

(NASDAQ: AMZN)—Amazon.com today announced that more new generation Kindles were ordered in the first four weeks of availability than in the same timeframe following any other Kindle launch, making the new Kindles the fastest-selling ever. In addition, in the four weeks since the introduction of the new Kindle and Kindle 3G, customers ordered more Kindles on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk combined than any other product, continuing Kindle’s over two-year run as the bestselling product across all the products sold on Amazon.com.

In the summer and amid slowing economy Kindle 3 was able to beat international Kindle 2 launch that was tied to the holiday shopping season last year. This is quite impressive but not surprising when one considers improved specs and features, price that got slashed in half and amount of customer awareness generated by previous launches.

I’ve just received my new graphite Kindle 3 Reader along with Kindle Lighted Leather Cover. Both items were overnighted by Fedex for a nominal $3.99 a piece thanks to Amazon Prime. So now I can finally get started on this hands-on review of Amazon’s latest gadget.

Kindle 3 at a glance:

Amazon Kindle 3

Here are the highlights of Amazon’s new Kindle 3 eBook reader:

• Small and light  - 7.5″ x 4.8″ x 0.335″, 8.7oz. In fact it’s one of the smallest eReaders out there and the best one by features by size and weight ratio. Easily fits in a small purse or a coat pocket.
• Sharp and fast 6″ 600×800 eInk screen. The contrast ratio is measurably better (see Kindle screen contrast measurement) that in other eReaders. eInk screen is free of glare and can be read in direct sunlight. There are several options including Leather Cover with LED light and Clip-On Mighty Bright XtraFlex2.
• 3G + WiFi connectivity. Kindle 3 can download books and access Wikipedia via free 3G connectivity in more than 100 different countries. WiFi (when it’s available) allows faster download speeds and connectivity where GSM data is not available. In some countries including US you can also access any website on the Internet via free 3G coverage.
• No computer required. You can buy and download books from the device itself.
• Long battery life. Up to 1 month with wireless off. Up to 3 weeks with WiFi connectivity and up to 10 days with 3G connectivity. You can read as much as you like without having to worry about recharging.
• Text-To-Speech and fully accessible menus via Voice Guide let you listen to the book as it is read and make Kindle 3 a fully accessible device.
• 670,000+ modern books with majority priced under $9.99. These include 107 of 111 New York Times Bestsellers. 1,800,000+ older out-of-copyright books available for free. These include books by Mark Twain, Jane Austen, H. G. Wells and other famous and popular authors.
• First several chapters in any book are available as free sample.
• Books purchased in Amazon Kindle store can also be read on a variety of different devices and platforms including: PC, Mac, iPhone, iPad, Android and Blackberry.
• All books purchased from Amazon Kindle store can be shared among all devices connected to the same Amazon account and read simultaneously.
• Built-in dictionary for instantly looking up word definitions. Alternate dictionaries can also be installed. For example English-Russian dictionary to provide instant translations.
• Native support for PDF, MOBI, PRC, TXT, JPEG, PNG, GIF and BMP files. DOC(X) is supported via online conversion.
• Native support for Cyrillic (Russian), Traditional and simplified Chinese, Japanese and Korean characters.
• Kindle 3 supports Audible (an Amazon subsidiary) audio books and allows bookmarking and chapter navigation. Although it lacks a fully functional audio-player, Kindle can play DRM-free MP3 files as a background music for a book.
• Social features. You can annotate your books, newspapers and magazines and share your annotations and highlights via Twitter and Facebook.
• Kindle 3 features upgraded WebKit-based browser that lets you view almost any website on eInk screen.
• 2 great word games (Shuffled Row and Every Word) with more applications on the way.
• 4 gigabytes of built in memory that can store up to 3,500 books.

Please read on for in depth review of these features and how they compare to Kindle 2 and other eReaders.

Kindle 3 Unboxed:

As usually both cover and Kindle came in Amazon’s signature “frustration free packaging”. You can easily get to your merchandise just with your bare hands without having to use knives or scissors. It is a minor but nonetheless pleasant element.

Latest Generation Kindle 3 and Lighted Leather Cover Unboxed

Kindle 3 Ergonomics:

Kindle 3 Weight

As you can see on our eReader size comparison page, Kindle 3 is one of the smallest eReaders out there. It is also one of the lightest. Although Amazon states 8.7 ounces of weight, actual measured weight is 8.2 ounces. Weighting 8.2 ounces  you can hardly feel it in your hand. Adding another 8 ounces of Leather cover with light to that really feels like a crime. Personally I’m going to shelf the cover at home and only put it on the Kindle while travelling. Amazon really did a great job on the weight and compactness. While Kindle 2 was just the right size to fit into my coat pocket, Kindle 3 fits in it easily with some room to spare.

Power and volume buttons, along with headphone audio jack all moved to the lower edge of the device, leaving all other edges nicely clean. Charging light is now integrated into the power button. Overall this setup is very similar to the original first generation Kindle.

As far a new control layout goes, Lab126 somewhat dropped the ball here in my opinion. Kindle 2 was the ultimate one-handed reader. Jeff Bezos even made jokes about it when interviewed by the media. In Kindle 3, Amazon designers did away with the 5-way controller, replacing it with a 5 button setup that is located much lower. Paging buttons stayed on the same place but became much smaller.

Kindle 3 Symbols Menu

I’m a right-handed person. With Kindle 2 I could hold the device in my right hand and manipulate “Next page”, “Menu”, “Home” and even “Back” button along with the 5-way stick with my thumb. Unless I needed to type an annotation or search for text I never had to engage my left hand. With Kindle 3 paging buttons are still easy to use – you just need to hold the device the same way you did Kindle 2 and slightly rock your thumb to flip pages. Surprisingly I’ve found it easier to to hold Kindle 3 and flip pages with my left hand. 5 navigational buttons along with “Menu”, “Home” and  ”Back” are much harder to reach and manipulate with thumb. It’s not impossible but personally I prefer to hold the device in the left hand and use right hand when I need to look up a word or manipulate a menu.

Given the fact that 97% of time it’s the “Next page” button that you are pressing I would consider it a minor defect, but defect nonetheless.

Unfortunately I don’t have any southpaw friends to provide feedback on Kindle ergonomics for left-handed people so I would be more than interested in comments from my readers in this regard and I’ll surely include them in this and subsequent Kindle 3 reviews.

Alphanumeric keyboard lost the numeric row (same as Kindle DX) so now you have to combine the Alt button with upper “QWERTYUIOP” row to type numbers. Slash (/) button was also eliminated so now you need to press Sym-Right-Right-Right-Ok to produce this symbol. Character table invoked by the “Sym” button got a whole new row filled with digits giving you yet another way to type numbers. On Kindle 3 buttons seem to bulge from the device body slightly more than from Kindle 2, making them easier to press. It is a minor plus but a plus nonetheless.

According to this review, larger charging light is easier for partially color-blind people to read than smaller lights in earlier generation Kindles and other eReaders.

Kindle 3 Screen:

Kindle 3 features eInk Pearl screen. eInk screens don’t have any light source and only require small amount of power to change the picture. Static pictures can stay on the screen forever without draining the battery at all. Since eInk screens are reflective, they can be read from easily under direct sunlight just like regular paper book.

Amazon claims that Kindle 3 has “50% better contrast ratio that any other eReader” and it seems that this claim does have some merit. Although I don’t know which methodology Amazon used in their tests and I’m a amateur photographer rather than a professional colormetrist, I did some measurements of my own and it does look like Kindle 3 beats other eReader in terms of contrast.

Kindle 3 Screen Contrast Test

I took a sheet of office paper and cut a rectangular hole in it to do measurements. Then I created a picture that was half fully black and half fully white. I displayed the picture on several eReaders that I had and photographed both white and black sections of the image covered by paper in such a way that only hole and paper would be in the frame. To make sure that all pictures are created equal I disabled all automatics and post-processing in my DSLR and used flash in manual mode to get consistent lighting. For better accuracy I used 16 bit/color channel resolution. I then blurred pictures to eliminate noise and measured intensities of reference paper, black and white sections of eReader screen in Photoshop. Since light intensity of the same piece of paper differed by less than 1% on all pictures I assume that my measurements were accurate enough. I then calculated white and black intensities relative to reference paper intensity and relative white to black intensity of each reader that represents contrast.

As you can see Kindle 3 is a clear leader in the contrast front with white to black ratio of almost 11. While all eReaders produce comparable white intensities, it is black intensity that really differentiates them and defines contrast ratio. Kindle 3 clearly produces darkest blacks of all devices, followed by Kindle 2 and Nook. It’s white is not as bright as the one one produced by older generation of eInk screen found in Kindle 2 and Nook but overall it clearly wins.

I was quite a bit surprised by Nook performance since I actually expected it to outperform Kindle 2 in contrast department. When I picked it up in the store couple of months ago the first thing that struck me was sharpness and contrast of text. It still looks sharp to me so I guess that it has to with fonts and the way they are rendered on the screen.

Sony PRS-600 touch edition is a clear outsider here – no surprise. Adding touchscreen layer on top of eInk really ruins the image clarity. Now I have actual numbers to back it up.

The new Kindle 3 screen has the same resolution of 600×800 with the same 6″ diagonal, giving it the same 167ppi spatial resolution. This resolution is adequate for comfortable reading at any reasonable font size.

Amazon claims 20% faster page turns. While I wasn’t able to test and accurately measure this metric subjectively it does seem to be true when I compare Kindle 3 and Kindle 2 side-by-side.

Kindle 3 Battery:

Kindle 3 Battery

Although officially Kindle 3 battery is not user-replaceable, it’s very easy to pop the cover off (you just need a thin screwdriver or a knife). Kindle 3 comes with LICO S11GTSF01A 3.7V 1750 mAh Lithium Polymer battery. This is an upgrade compared to 1530 mAh battery by the same manufacturer found in Kindle 2.

According to Amazon it allows up to 1 month battery life with wireless off and up to 3 weeks with wireless on for  WiFi-only Kindle 3 and up to 10 days for WiFi + 3G Kindle.

Buy doing some simple math we can calculate average current drains of about 2.4 mA with wireless completely off, 3.5 mA when running on WiFi and 7.3 mA when running on 3G + WiFi.

Many people are wondering about what would cover with built-in LED light do to the battery life. Luckily I had a digital multimeter and a piece of wire handy so I was able to measure the drain current of the cover as well. It turned out to be 76.6 milliamperes. This by an order a magnitude larger than what Kindle 3 consumes even with wireless on. So with LED light on battery life is going to be between 20.85 and 22.15 hours of constant reading. This is about twice as long as 10 hour battery life of Apple iPad.

Even though the battery is not officially replaceable, it should not be a big problem. Since Kindle can go on weeks without a recharge, this means fewer recharge cycles per year and therefore more years of total battery life.

Another thing worth pointing out is the fact that Kindle 3 would use WiFi network whenever it is available and disable 3G. Depending on how power management is implemented in hardware in software it might be possible to get same 3 weeks battery life on 3G+WiFi Kindle if the device is within WiFi range most of the time.

Kindle 3 Font Options:

Kindle 3 Font Test

With the latest firmware Kindle 3 supports 8 font sizes, 3 typefaces, 3 line spacing settings and 3 line widths. Overall this gives you 168 different ways to display any text. I ran some tests to give get an idea how these settings differ by displaying “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” sentence over and over on the same page.

On default settings (Font size #3, regular typeface, large line spacing, default words per line) Kindle screen accommodates 221 words. Following table illustrates the effect of different font settings on the number of words per page:

While in my opinion “words per line” setting that was originally introduced on Kindle DX doesn’t make much sense on a small 6″ screen, other settings give users lost of ways to customize their reading experience.

When reading PDF files none of these options are available since fonts are embedded into the files themselves. However there is “contrast setting” with 5 possible values: “lightest”, “lighter”, “default”, “darker”, “darkest”. What it really does is control the weight (boldness) of the font. Is very useful for making small fonts readable without having to zoom into PDF or change screen orientation.

Kindle 3 PDF Support:

Kindle 3 PDF Viewer

Initially PDF native support was introduced in Kindle DX. Back then Kindle software lacked support for zoom and pan so large 9.7″ screen was the only way to deal with documents that are intended for letter size paper (due to the way PDF format works it may be impossible to reflow text in PDF files, although Sony PRS-600 seems to be quite good about it). Since then PDF support was backported to Kindle 2 and after that received several upgrades.

In Kindle 3 you can:

• Zoom and scroll/pan PDF files. One good alternative to zooming is changing screen orientation to landscape and using paging buttons to scroll the page up and down.
• Do dictionary lookups just like with regular books.
• Highlight and annotate PDF files. Although annotations can be shared via Twitter and Facebook users will only see your annotation text but not the portion of the document you’ve annotated. Perhaps Amazon will fix this issue in the future.
• Search within PDF file.
• Change font weight.

You still can’t use any external or internal document hyperlinks or use built-in table of contents. This can be somewhat alleviated by searching for chapter names or using “Goto page number” menu function. Hopefully hyperlinks are also on Amazon’s TODO list.

Overall I can say that compared to “fair” PDF support in Kindle 2, Kindle 3 has “good” PDF support that can become “excellent” some day.

Kindle 3 Wireless Options:

Historically Kindle has shipped with free 3G wireless connectivity. Initially it was available though Sprint CDMA network only in the US. In 2009 when International Kindle 2 was released, Amazon switched to AT&T GSM network with roaming agreements in more than 100 countries.

Kindle 3 comes in two flavors: WiFi Only and 3G + WiFi. WiFi only option is $50 cheaper, slightly lighter and gets one more week of battery life. WiFi + 3G Kindle users the same AT&T 3G GSM network with international roaming as international Kindle but will use protected and unprotected WiFi networks whenever they are available. AT&T bills Amazon around $0.15 per megabyte of downloaded data so it’s a reasonable step for Amazon to forgo this cost while providing users with higher download speeds.

I’ve tested Kindle 3 with AT&T 3G connection and in WiFi mode with my home wireless network and with Sprint EVO 4G in mobile hotspot mode. Every time it worked perfectly. Both 802.11B and 802.11G networks are supported.

People who have mobile hotspot capable smartphones (ex: Android-based phones) may opt for the cheaper $139 Kindle WiFi and still enjoy global wireless connectivity via their phone. Personally I opted for $50 upfront 3G fee for the added convenience always-on connectivity and not having to worry about phone battery charge (mobile hotspot drains phone battery really fast).

Amazon claims 1 week longer battery life for WiFi only Kindle with wireless on compared to 3G + WiFi version. However Kindle 3 would always prefer WiFi connection to 3G so if it is smart enough to completely power off 3G modem when it is not used 1 month uptime for Kindle 3G may also be possible if the device spends most of the time within WiFi range.

It’s also worth noting that there are no separate controls for WiFi and 3G. There is a single menu option “Turn Wireless On/Off” that controls both radios.

Kindle 3 Social Features:

Kindle 3 has the same set of social features as recently released Kindle DX Graphite. You can share highlights and annotations from the books that you read with your friends via Twitter and Facebook. This features also works in newspapers and magazines but not in blogs (it’s a pity since despite doing most of my work on computer I prefer to read blogs like TechCrunch on Kindle if possible)

On top of that Kindle has a kind of social network of its own. You can opt-in to share your book highlights with Amazon. This way passages highlighted by multiple people become highlighted in the book as you read it and made available online. For example you can check out the most highlighted passages from “Eat, Pray, Love” here.

Kindle 3 Web Browser:

Kindle 3 Browser Article Mode

Kindle 3 comes with new WebKit-based web browser that does a much better job at rendering websites than previous browser in Kindle 2. New browser is much faster, more standard compliant and generally better at displaying complex web pages.

When I previously compared Kindle 2 with Nook, Nook was a hands down winner in web-browser department. Websites loaded much faster and nicer than with Kindle 2. In fact some websites Kindle 2 failed to load at all.

Kindle 3 addressed this problem nicely. Previously I would only use Kindle 2 browser as a last resort (if my smartphone wasn’t available) for anything other than Wikipedia. With Kindle 3 I would have to admit that web-browsing is quite usable and fast. In fact with some websites larger screen gives Kindle an advantage over smartphones. I did several side-by-side tests with Nook and found that loading speed was almost exactly the same. It didn’t have any problems even with active javascript content like eReader size comparator.

Another killer feature is “Article Mode”. It is specifically tailored for blogs. When it is turned on Kindle strips away headers, sidebars etc and displays only article content from the page (including images). Since this mode takes away all fancy formating, paging back in forth is extremely fast.

Overall with proper browser, free unlimited 3G Internet and WiFi option Kindle is a clear leader among eReaders when it comes to web-browsing.

Other Kindle 3 Features:

Kindle 3 added native support for several ranges of Unicode characters, including Cyrillic (Russian), Traditional and simplified Chinese, Japanese and Korean. You no longer need to install hacks or convert your books to PDF to read them on Kindle. All you need to do is save text file in UTF8 encoding and copy it into Kindle documents folder. Hopefully Amazon will enable these characters in self-published books soon so international dictionaries including English-Russian dictionary can be properly published.

Kindle 3 Unicode Support (Russian, Chinese, Japanese)

Kindle 3 has 4GB of built-in flash memory with 3.3 gigabytes available for your books, documents, photos and MP3 files. This is an upgrade compared to 2GB in Kindle 2.

Audible audiobooks are supported just as they were in Kindle 2.

Kindle 3 retains all of Kindle 2 Easter eggs, including picture viewer, calculator, minesweeper and gomoku.

There are two word game apps available for Kindle: Shuffled Row and Every Word. More applications are on the way.

Kindle 3 doesn’t have an accelerometer like Kindle DX so page orientation needs to be changed manually.

Kindle 3 Lights and Covers

Kindle 3 is a very lightweight device. Even so accidental drops might break it and the screen is not resistant to scratches. So protective covers are recommended. Although one is not included with the device itself, Amazon offers two models in seven colors each:

Kindle Lighted Leather Cover has a built in LED light. Cover hinges are conductive so the light draws power from Kindle battery. Estimated battery life with the light on is around 21 hours. The cover generally gets good reviews on Amazon. Unfortunately it is quite heavy. At 8oz weight it doubles the weight of the device. Nice thing about this cover is that the light shuts off when Kindle goes to sleep so it will not drain the battery if you leave it on the table and forget to turn off the light.

If you just need the light and not the cover Mighty Bright XtraFlex2 might be the way to go for you. It weights under 3 ounces, runs off 3 AAA batteries and clips-on to almost anything (including Kindle). Although I don’t know exact battery life of this light I can say that I’ve had it for more than a year and it still runs on original Duracell batteries that came with it.

If you want cover but not the light, there is basic leather cover. It is roughly 1.5 ounces lighter, costs $25 less than the one with the light and does a great job protecting your Kindle from scratches and falls.

Kindle 3 Leather Covers

Be aware that Kindle 3 has a different cover hinge configuration from Kindle 2 so covers designed for Kindle will not work.

Kindle 3 Disassembled:

Seeing how easy it is to remove Kindle 3 cover since there are no parts attached to it either outside or inside at all I couldn’t resist the temptation to take it off and snap the following picture (click to see full resolution version).

Here’s a scoop of what I was able to see:

• Battery is 3.7V 1750 mAh 6,47Wh Li-Po  LICO S11GTSF01A branded for Amazon Kindle. Kindle 2 contained 1530 mAh battery so this is a slight upgrade.
• 3G modem is AnyDATA DTP-600W, FCC ID: P4M-DTP-600W, IC : 4594A-DTP600W.
• WiFi card is Atheros AR6102G.
• It uses Wolfson Microelectronics WM8960G stereo codec and 1W speaker and headphone driver chip.

At the moment I didn’t want to dig deeper since I didn’t want to risk accidentally ruining the device before this review is done. I promise to take a better look at what’s inside in the future.

Conclusion:

At $189 price point Kindle 3 is the best value for money eReader on the market. It is a third generation device and Amazon has addressed few issues and shortcomings that previous generations had. At the moment it has the best eInk screen among all eReaders that I’m aware of. It is a a well-polished device that is optimized for reading books and at that it excels. In addition to reading books Kindle 3 provides good experience for browsing the web (especially when one considers the fact that global Internet access is gratis from Amazon), listening to audio-books, and playing simple games.

At $139 Kindle WiFi with the same sharp and high-contrast screen and other features is a steal given wide availability of free WiFi internet worldwide.

While it has some potential for improvement (like any other device), issues like PDF table of contents support can be addressed by a software update in the future.

However don’t just take my word for it – check out what people are saying in their reviews.

Well, it’s been a week now since we got word of the new Kindle 3 release date and the details that go along with it.  Most regular consumers won’t have a chance to get one in their hands for a while yet, given the “On or before Sep 4th” updated release date and the fact that those who didn’t jump right in must now wait a bit longer, since Amazon(NASDAQ:AMZN) has already sold out their initial stock.  In the meantime, there are a few reviewers who have been given a chance to get to know their new Kindles a bit in advance and a huge number of people wishing they had as they examine every detail they can get while they wait.  What exactly is being said so far?

PCWorld’s Melissa J. Perenson gave us a good look at the new features.  The expected highlights are all there and duly noted as a greatly improved experience.  She liked how the darker border accentuated the screen, the more comfortable button layout, an improved keyboard, faster page turns, etc.  Things that might not have stood out to most potential users, but that seem to be a big deal in practice, are: the lighter weight of the new design(15% lighter than the Kindle 2, which was itself noticeably lighter than the competing nook device), the rubber backing which greatly increases the comfort of reading one-handed(assuming no case, of course), and the ability to change your preferred typeface.  This last might seem like no big deal to the majority of long-term Kindle owners, but it is a feature that most every other eReader, from LCDs to the nook, has had for a while now.  As far as this review goes, she found absolutely nothing worth listing as a significant downside.

ZDNet’s Larry Dignan also managed to get his hands on one and was kind enough to present some opinions.  One of the things that readers will be pleased to note is that the page turn speed is now, according to this description at least, a complete non-issue.  As he describes it: “Simply put, the Kindle turns pages faster than I can. It’s instant book gratification.”  In addition to this, the 50% higher contrast and the improved design of the physical interface were both deemed worthy of mention as major selling points.  A somewhat surprising note was the improved Webkit browser.  While the convenience of a Kindle‘s browser has occasionally been useful, I don’t think many people would consider it a vital feature for improvement.  Maybe Amazon will surprise some people here.  Dignan’s cited negatives as far as the new Kindle goes concentrate on the format(and really who doesn’t want Amazon to at least support third-party EPUBs at this point?), and lack of apps.  Since we’ve started to see some KDK projects in the form of games become available for public consumption already, it’s fairly safe to say that the latter point is becoming moot.  Is the lack of open format going to be enough to turn most people off of the device?  It seems rather doubtful.  Another reviewer with a very positive look at things.

CNET’s David Carnoy takes a bit of a more speculative view on the device, observing its potential for the future, as much as what it offers at the moment.  As usual, note is made of the improved screen, both in terms of contrast and refresh speed.  The brief note that Amazon has advised their customers that they can return their Kindle 2 purchases for the new model, assuming those purchases were made in the last 30 days, should be fairly useful for some.  He also, fortunately, provides us with some details that have not seen as much attention as perhaps they should.  First, the new Kindle software will, it appears, allow for the reading of password-protected PDF documents.  This will, of course, have an effect on a fairly narrow range of users at the moment, but it will also open up a number of new potential business applications.  Second, the new browser, in addition to being faster and easier to use, will have something called “Article Mode”.  This viewing mode will allow users to cut away everything but the text content on a page for ease of reading and to minimize the necessary page refreshes.  While Carnoy once again cites the arbitrary $99 price point as something Amazon has thus far achieved, this is the only negative he seems able to come up with at this point.

Try as I might, and I did, to find a counterpoint to all this unbridled positivity, nobody seems down on the new release for anything rational.  There’s a small crowd of people complaining that $139 isn’t $99, so Amazon is bad.  There’s also a similar contingent claiming that since it isn’t a color touchscreen tablet, the $500iPad renders it worthless.  Overall, however, this is clearly the most positive, most anticipated, and most affordable addition to the eReader market so far.

Nobody is going to claim that there is nowhere left for eReaders to go, but this is clearly a high point for consumers, with an accessible price point, strong hardware that does its job well, an incredible selection, and the whole Kindle platform as it spreads across nearly every computing device one is likely to get an urge to read on.  It will be worth checking back when the device starts hitting homes and people have more first-hand experiences to talk about, but nobody seems at all hesitant to be impressed.

In case you’ve missed out on our own Kindle 3 review, you can check it out before making up your mind.

Kindle 3 White And Graphite

Since the original Kindle 3 release announcement I had some to carefully examine all of the news and press releases and compile this comprehensive Kindle 3 Review.

Although Kindle 3 rumors  have been circulating for some time, Fall 2010 was the widely anticipated release date. Rumors intensified when Kindle 2 became sold out on Amazon.com one day prior to the official announcement that came on July 28th, 2010.

In a nutshell Kindle 3 (although Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) never used this name) comes with following features:

Kindle 3 Screen

3rd generation Kindle comes with the same next generation eInk Pearl screen that is found in recently released Kindle DX Graphite but in 6″ form factor. The screen features the same 600×800 resolution with 16 shades of gray. Partially due to new screen technology and partially due to a software update, new Kindle will feature 20% faster page turns than the 2nd generation Kindle.

Kindle 3 Fonts

On top of some software improvements that made the default font look crisper, Amazon has introduced 2 additional font options: condensed Caecilia and Sans Serif. But what is more important, finally Kindle will natively support a broader range of characters:

• Cyrillic used in Russian, Ukrainian, Belorussian, Bulgarian, Serbian, Tajik and dozens of other languages
• Japanese
• Traditional and simplified Chinese
• Korean
• Greek

This means that I can finally stop updating Kindle Unicode Font Hack that with time and numerous Kindle software and hardware update has become a conundrum of patches, jailbreaks and uninstallers. It also means that I would be able to republish Kindle Russian Dictionary using native Cyrillic characters rather than transliteration. Since it will not be the only book published with non-Latin characters, the updated font will inevitable make their way to all other Kindle versions.

Kindle 3 Size and Weight

Kindle 3 comes 21% smaller and 17% lighter than Kindle 2. You can select multiple eReaders (by holding the Ctrl key and clicking) from the list below to see how they compare by size.

As you can see, Kindle 3 is smaller than Kindle 2 but slightly larger than nook or Sony PRS-600. Both of these readers however lack keyboard that allows them to be more compact. PRS-300 is smaller still but it has a smaller 5″ reading area too so it wouldn’t really be a fair comparison.

This reduction in size didn’t come free though. Paging buttons are much smaller than they used to be and numerical keyboard row is merged with the top letter row the same way as it is on Kindle DX.

Kindle 3 Storage and Connectivity

Starting from 2nd generation Kindle Amazon has eliminated external memory card storage in their eReaders. Kindle 3 is no exception. Internal flash memory size has doubled compared to Kindle 2. Now entire line-up of Kindle readers features 4GB of internal flash memory for storing books. Not that it really matters: even without global 3G connectivity 2 gigabytes of text will take a very-very long while for anyone to read even with 20% faster page turns. 3G connectivity pretty much eliminates the need for large internal storage altogether barring the scenario of solo around the world sailboat trip.

So far WiFi has been a feature exclusive to Barnes&Noble nook until now. New Kindle will automatically take advantage of 3G WiFi hotspots if they are found nearby. This would provide faster download speeds, ability to download books in places without AT&T coverage and save Amazon money. Amazon used to pay $0.15 per megabyte downloaded to Sprint (and probably still pays similar amount to AT&T). I’m almost positive that it would be possible to configure Kindle to connect to any other wireless network – open or encrypted (provided you know the credentials).

There is a Wi-Fi only version. It is $50 cheaper and 0.2oz lighter. Personally I would prefer to pay $50 upfront for the convenience of being able to download books almost anywhere hassle free and automatically getting my periodicals without having to manually power-manage the WiFi or worrying about finding a hotspot. It should be possible to use Kindle WiFi together with Android phone (like Sprint EVO 4G) or any other device that acts as a mobile hotspot. Any way you look at it – WiFi is a welcome and long awaited addition to Kindle feature set.

Kindle 3 Battery Life

It looks like Amazon has pushed the battery life even further. Previous versions of Kindle used to work 7 days with 3G on and “several weeks” with 3G off. In my personal experience “several weeks” was 1 month. Now Amazon officially states 1 month of battery life with wireless off. So perhaps it would be even longer in reality.

Kindle 3 Browser

It was nice to be able to browser Wikipedia via 3G connection for free, but apart from that and running the Amazon Kindle Book store Kindle 2 experimental browser was hardly useful. The newest Kindle comes with new Webkit-based browser that hopefully would be more responsive and usable on websites with complex layouts. I own and actively use B&N nook and I can honestly say that nook browser is excellent. That being said I hardly ever use either Kindle or nook browser. 4″ smartphone screen offers much better browsing experience than 6″ eInk. eBook reader were built for linear reading and in this eInk excels. Web-browsing is a very random non-linear process. In all likelihood 4″ screen despite it’s small size is going to contain less text than you are going to read before navigating to next page via some link.

Another novel feature – is ‘browser article mode’. Kindle browser will use some experimental heuristics to eliminate everything but the main page text, distilling the web-page into something similar to newspaper article.

Kindle 3 File Formats

With new release the list of supported formats didn’t change. AZW, TXT, PDF, PRC, MOBI, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP are natively supported. DOC, DOCX, RTF and HTML are supported via online conversion tool. This list may not be final since new formats (hopefully someday EPUB too) can be added via software update as was the case with PDF support on Kindle 2.

Kindle 3 PDF Support

The latest Kindle offers the same level of PDF support as Kindle DX Graphite. You can pan and zoom PDF files, annotate them and do dictionary lookups.

Other Kindle 3 Features

On top of all this Kindle 3 gets voice-accessible menus and microphone. Voice accessible menus (Kindle will read aloud all menu items) along with text-to-speech should take make Kindle a fully accessible device that can be used in a classroom.

As for the microphone. It is there but it is not mentioned in official specification. Therefore it’s reserved for a future use. Most likely it will enable adding voice notes or recording classroom sessions. Some reviewers have speculated on voice-activated page turns and hands-free reading but I personally find such scenarios unlikely.

Social features like Facebook and Twitter integration and sharing favorite passages have carried over from previous Kindle versions. Personally I find “favorite passages” to be the most useful feature. It really adds to the book reading experience and is not intrusive. I have to confess that I selfishly use this feature while not highlighting any passages myself.

Final verdict

Should you buy Kindle 3? If you love reading – Hell, yeah! It’s shaping up to be the best eReader as far a features to price ratio is concerned. Amazon has been developing eBook Readers for years now and each product they release is better that the ones before (which were good to begin with). Personally I already pre-ordered mine so you are sure to see a hands on review soon after I receive it.

The transition to electronic textbooks, once thought to the next big boon for publishers, is meeting with surprising resistance among students and professors. Studies conducted on the Kindle DX at business schools across the country showed an overwhelming–90%–support of the ereader by students for casual reading. However only the tech savvy “power users” embraced the device for academic work. Many students and their professors, used to highlighting text and making notes in the margins, were unable or unwilling to use  Kindle DX’s annotation functions. But they may be forced to catch up.

With their relative low cost, electronic textbooks are an inevitable part of higher education’s future. Not withstanding the initial purchase price, the cost storing and maintaining electronic books is less than half that of paper books. Campus librarians have already foreseen the death of the traditional library. Rather than a storehouse for large numbers of paper volumes, the library of the not-too-distant future will be place for students to use their laptops to access the college’s digital collections.

Technology aside, there are immediate benefits that are impossible to overlook. It’s easier to haul a Kindle than the hundreds of pounds of books and study materials it replaces. Even considering the initial cost of the device, it can save money on text book costs. And it’s greener on the environment, an important consideration for academics. Lev Gonick, vice president of information technology services at Case Western Reserve, likened the resistance to ebooks to that seen with any new technology. College students, recognized for their trend setting nature, will soon become converts.

With Amazon announcing Kindle SDK (KDK) I’ve decided to launch a separate Kindle Apps blog for reviewing and speculating about Kindle Apps. Since no apps has been released yet and little is known about the KDK itself I’ll be mostly speculating to begin with. The blog can be found at http://kindle-apps.net/

Sony Reader Touch

Sony’s latest competition against the Kindle are the  Sony Reader Touch and Sony Reader Pocket.  Here’s a quick roundup of various reviews of these new products from around the net.

• Gizmodo – Glare ruins the Reader Touch, Pocket is short on features but cheap price.
• ZDNet – The Reader Touch works great, glare isn’t much of an issue.
• CNET – Reader Touch get 3 out of 5.  Better to get Kindle at this price.
• CNET – Reader Pocket gets 3.5 out of 5.  Good deal for the price.
• Financial Times – Touch screen more natural to use than Kindle controls, but misses wireless.  Reviewer likes free Kindle iPhone app over Reader Pocket.
• Mobile Tech Review – Reader Touch has caught up with Amazon and may even get some Kindle defectors.
• iReaderReview – Reader Touch gets 7.75 out of 10.  Doesn’t quite beat the Kindle but Sony is getting really close.
• iReaderReview – Reader Pocket vs. similarly priced Kindle 2 refurb.  Pocket is better for basic reading, but Kindle 2 has better additional features.

Kindle DX, Kindle 2, Sony PRS-505

It so happened that I purchased Sony PRS-505 for my Dad. I chose Sony eReader because my Dad living outside WhisperNet coverage and having very little knowledge of English language (and therefore no interest in any books that are sold on Amazon.com) effectively negated all benefits of Amazon Kindle.

On the other hand Sony eBook reader is extensively used by Russian community so on top of Unicode fonts there’s also complete localization of UI available in Russian (and in many other languages). A lot of credit for this should be given to Igor Skochinsky who also made Unicode Font Hack possible by figuring out a way to create custom updates for Amazon Kindle.

Therefore I’ve had a chance to briefly compare the Sony reader with both Kindle 2 and Kindle DX side-by-side. I would like to share my impressions on the subject. It is in no way a complete review – just an opinion. But perhaps someone will find it useful.

Exterior: Although I found Sony PRS-505 more visually pleasing than Kindle, I found pagination buttons of Kindle more comfortable. This is kind of a big deal since flipping pages constitutes 95% of eBook reader usage. It is nice that Sony eReader comes with protective cover included. I also purchased cover with light prism. It looked really cool all the way up to the moment when I turned it on. Then I found that it somewhat reduces text contrast. On the bright side, it leaks much less light than Mighty Bright XtraFlex that I use with Kindle. I also found 10 numerical buttons on PRS-505 handy and highly functional.

Display: Both Kindle 2 and PRS-505 sport 6″ eInk displays of the same resolution of 600×800. They differ in the number of supported colors: 16 for Kindle vs. 8 for Sony and in contrast which I subjectively found to be higher in the Sony reader.

Storage: Kindle 2 sports 1.4Gb of internal flash memory storage usable for books, while Sony device has significantly less (192Mb) but compensates for it by having 2 expansion slots that can potentially add 10Gb of additional storage. Plus you have the ability to swap memory cards that you carry in your pocket making the storage potentially unlimited. Not that it really matters because as I’ve shown in Kindle 2 vs. Kindle DX comparison, you’ll need to spend around $8,500 to completely fill up 1.4Gb of Kindle storage with books. So unless you use your reader for viewing manga as collection of JPEG files or go on solo many times around the world boat trips without a computer you really should not care either way.

Software: Sony seems to resume from sleep mode faster than Kindle. It also offers more in terms of organizing your book collection. Latter is a major pain point and probably the most requested feature by Kindle users. I would very much like Kindle to do a better job at organizing the books I purchased. There really is no reason for this feature to not be there given that Kindles have fully functional keyboard that would make naming collections and tags really easy. On the other hand Kindle sports some features that are not found in its Sony competitor like text-to-speech and web-browser.

PDF Support: While Kindle 2 only supports PDF via conversion, Kindle DX has a native support like the Sony does. While I didn’t have a chance to explore in detail PDF capabilities of Sony PRS-505 like I did with Kindle DX, I did try one PDF file. I have to admit that Sony does a better job at supporting PDF than Kindle because PRS-505 supports internal hyperlinks and table of contents as well as reflowing text to accommodate different font sizes. 9.7″ screen size of Kindle DX that can also work in landscape mode provides a saving straw because it makes reflowing unnecessary for many PDF files.

PC Software and book buying experience: I didn’t install the Sony software as my Dad would have no use for it (he only plans to read Russian classics that are freely available on the Internet) and I didn’t need to install Amazon software because there isn’t any. Although it may seem unfair (since I haven’t tried the Sony way) I’ll say that comparing book buying experience for Kindle and Sony would be like beating a dead horse. It’s the main selling point of Amazon Kindle and it’s what made it so successful.

Conclusion: Overall I liked the Sony device even tough it’s soon going to be outdated by newer models some of which will have touchscreen (another highly anticipated Kindle feature). Sony seems to have better software and both Amazon and Sony have strong and weak points in ergonomics. If I could have the same book buying experience and selection on Sony as I have with Amazon Kindle, I’d probably go with Sony eReader. However since things are the way they are, I’m staying with Kindle and my dad will use Russian-localized version of PRS-505 to read classics freely available from sites like lib.ru

P.S.: I’ve alredy finished this comparison review when I discovered a new aspect of these devices I wasn’t aware of. Kindle turned out to be much better for non-English speakers who want to learn the language than Sony PRS-505 due to built-in dictionary and text-to-speech capability. My sister started reading English books with intent of enriching her active vocabulary. Built-in dictionary lookup saved her tons of time each time the ran into an unfamilar word. Text-to-speech gave her a very good idea of how each word sounds as she read along with the device. So Kindle although lacking free Internet connectivity outside the US can still be perfect for some foreign users.

When I get my hands on newer Sony eReader models I’ll see how they stack up against the Kindle and post some reviews as well.

David Byrne

Reviews for the Kindle seem to pop up from some of the most unexpected people.  One new response to the Kindle DX comes from David Byrne, the front man of the legendary Talking Heads (and one half of the duo responsible for last years phenomenal Everything That Happens Will Happen Today).  It might seem a little odd to hear gadget commentary from Byrne, but when you’re a world famous performer you do a lot of traveling.  The Kindle DX simply seemed like the ideal traveler’s accessory.

His review is for the most part positive.  Byrne likens the Kindle’s screen to the same quality as a black and white newspaper and perfectly suited for reading.  He raves about magazines on the device and how he can read the New Yorker without ads and with the latest issue wirelessly appearing on his Kindle.  Byrne does have a few gripes about Amazon’s proprietary format, however, and takes some time in his review to decry how closed off the platform is and his overall disapproval of DRM.

More interesting is his speculation for the Kindle’s future.  Byrne predicts that it won’t be long before the format is broken open and future of digital book publishing will involve formats with less DRM restrictions or none at all just as it happened with digital music market with Apple, Microsoft and Amazon selling DRM-free MP3 files.

Nicholson Baker

Author Nicholson Baker has written a lengthy response to the Kindle for the New Yorker.  I wouldn’t necessarily call it a review, as it’s more a humorous essay about his experiences using the device.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with Baker, he’s one of those authors that people either love or hate.  He’s most famous for the extreme stream of consciousness style that most of his prose takes, often getting side tracked and spending more time on minute details than anything of importance.  For example, in his first novel, the purposely plotless The Mezzanine, the narrator spends a large amount of time analyzing the daily wear and tear of shoelaces.  It’s actually one of the book’s recurring motifs.  Depending on your point of view, this is either hilarious or annoying.

It’s the focus on details that makes Baker’s reaction more of an essay than a real review.  After 10 paragraphs of succumbing to the Kindle’s online advertising, making the decision to purchase, and slowly opening the packaging, Baker focuses in on the power adapter.

The plug, which was combined with the USB connector, was extremely well designed, in the best post-Apple style. It was a very, very good plug.

At first, it seems like Baker’s view of the device is extremely negative.  He does have a large number of complaints, mainly about the gray color, default font, and the way newspapers have been formatted for the device.  He also states that he greatly prefers reading Kindle books on the iPhone.  But at the very end he comes to accept the Kindle.

Poof, the Kindle disappeared, just as Jeff Bezos had promised it would. I began walking up and down the driveway, reading in the sun. Three distant lawnmowers were going. Someone wearing a salmon-colored shirt was spraying a hose across the street. But I was in the courtroom, listening to the murderer testify. I felt the primitive clawing pressure of wanting to know how things turned out.

I began pressing the Next Page clicker more and more eagerly, so eagerly that my habit of page turning, learned from years of reading—which is to reach for the page corner a little early, to prepare for the movement—kicked in unconsciously. I clicked Next Page as I reached the beginning of the last line, and the page flashed to black and changed before I’d read it all. I was trying to hurry the Kindle. You mustn’t hurry the Kindle. But, hell, I didn’t care. The progress bar at the bottom said I was ninety-one per cent done. I was at location 7547. I was flying along. Gray is a good color, I thought.

If you have some time to kill, I recommend reading the whole thing.  There’s much more to the essay than a general critique of the device.  Baker sometimes takes the essay in strange directions, getting sidetracked by things like the prevalence of erotic literature available on the Kindle store.  I actually laughed out loud a few times while reading.  If you are a fan of offbeat, dry humor, you should check it out.

PC World’s James A. Martin has posted an article about the positive experience he’s had flying with a Kindle 2.  He gives three main reasons why any traveller could benefit from taking along a Kindle:

1. Don’t Have to Sprint to the Airport Newsstand
2. Can Comfortably Read a Newspaper in Coach
3. Can Read Documents and Web Content

And I completely agree with this and can add #4: you don’t need to sit on the floor next to toilet door because that’s where the only free AC outlet happens to be as Kindle can run pretty much forever on a single charge.

When it comes to flying, the Kindle is an indispensible companion.  Unless, of course, you just happen to have incredibly bad luck like I did a while ago.

I’m still surprised that why Kindles are still not sold in the airports.

After using Kindle DX for a while I would like to add to my first impressions. In my original review I’ve described large screen as more of a disadvantage because of the reduced mobility rather than something good. After Almost a month of usage I’ve changed my opinion.

I’ve actually come to like the larger screen. Reading experience is more book-like. I’ve used second smallest font on both Kindle DX and K2. With DX I have to slip pages less often and I actually like it this way because this actually distracts me a little bit from the process of reading. I’ve also found that additional weight doesn’t tire my hand this much and that I actually read at home much more than I do on the go.

Then there was another occurrence that elevated my opinion about DX even more. My eyes can hardly be called perfect. I wear +4.0/+5.0 glasses or contacts on constant basis. There was this evening when I already took out my contacts and then decided to read a little bit before going to sleep. Yet, alas! My glasses were nowhere to be found. I took my DX and set the font size to second largest that turned out quite comfortable to read with my uncorrected eyesight. With Kindle DX even at such large font size there was enough text on the screen for me to enjoy reading. I tried the same trick on Kindle 2 later and there were only 2 or 3 sentences on the screen at a time so I had to flip pages several times a minute.

I realize that this is all not rocket science but perhaps this first hand experience will help someone to decide Kindle DX vs. Kindle 2 dilemma :)

Now that I’ve had the chance to use both devices it’s time for a small comparative review.
Let’s compare their specifications side-by-side:

Specification	Kindle DX	Kindle 2
	Kindle DX	Kindle 2
Size	10.4″ x 7.2″ x 0.38″ (+86%)	8″ x 5.3″ x 0.36″
Weight	18.9 oz (+85%)	10.2 oz
Display Size	8″ x 5.5″ (+164%), 9.7″ diagonal	4.75″ x 3.5″, 6″ diagonal
Display Size Percentage	59% (+20)	39%
Display Resolution	824 x 1200 (+106%)	600 x 800
PPI	150 (-11%)	167
Usable storage	3.3Gb (+136%)	1.4Gb
Supported formats	AZW, TXT, MOBI, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP, MP3, AAX, PDF	AZW, TXT, MOBI, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP, MP3, AAX
Connectivity	EVDO 3G, USB, 3.5mm stereo mini-jack	EVDO 3G, USB, 3.5mm stereo mini-jack
Price	$489.00 (+36%)	$359.00

So for 36% more money you get double amount of display pixels, more than double storage and display area, less than double size and weight to carry around and native PDF support to boot. Sounds like sleek deal? Actually this depends on your lifestyle and usage patterns.

I mostly use Amazon Kindle for reading books and periodicals. Often I do it on the go. So for me Kindle 2 is ideal. It fits perfectly into my jacket pocket so I can always have it with me. So far I’ve had trouble filling 1.4Gb of K2 storage with books. In fact given average Kindle eBook size of 1.5Mb and price of $9.99 you need to spend $8,500+ on books to completely fill up flash memory on Kindle 2 before you’ll need to archive books away. If you plan to stuff Kindle DX with books prepare to spend $20,000+

Screen size. Large screen looks nice. That’s for sure. However 6″ screen of Kindle 2 is quite enough to read most of the content you would want. Kindle DX’s screen is so large that if I got a little distracted while reading a book it would go into sleep mode before I can finish the page. Although DX is quite heavy it’s still comfortable to hold and use, at least of a right-handled person that I am. However when I go out and want to have something to read between several appointments K2 wins hands down. If you are into comics or manga, large screen can come in handy as well. Ability to go to landscape mode can be useful with small fraction of books as well. It should also be noted that screen on Kindle DX seems to have better slightly better contrast and fonts seem to be heavier and darker.

Non-English books support. In Kindle 2 you can use my Unicode Font Hack to install international fonts. This way you can adjust the font size as you like while you read. The down-side is that it’s a hack and although Droid fonts that I used contain a lot of characters, they don’t contain them all. You can also browse international websites. With Kindle DX you can use one of the many options available for converting your book to PDF with embedded fonts and read it on your Kindle DX. You can’t change the font size on the go but you can pick the right one to begin with when you convert the book. This doesn’t solve the problem of international characters in websites however. (See update below) Technically the same solution was available for Kindle 2 as well – you could either convert books into batches of JPEG files or use Savory hack. However these solutions would not work too well because of the small screen size.

Update: Unicode Font Hack is now fully supported by Kindle DX. So on DX you can either go PDF way or replace default fonts and have non-English characters in .mobi, .txt files as well as converted documents and web-pages.

If you need to work with literature in PDF format especially the kind that has a lot of illustrations and math formulas – then you definitely need Kindle DX. There is no way any converter would produce decent results that will look good on K2 screen. Either the text will be too small or graphical contents will be messed up. You can take a look at side by side comparison of Kindle DX native PDF rendering and Amazon document converter processed document on Kindle 2.

Kindle DX vs. Kindle 2 PDF Support

In this usage scenario Kindle DX absolutely rules. Perhaps Amazon should introduce configurable idle timeout option on the settings page as comprehending large page full of formulas can take a long time and the device will go into sleep mode.

Bottom line

If you like to read on the go and portability is important to you – go with Kindle 2. If you need to work with PDF files or graphically intensive content that K2 can’t display properly because of lack of support or small screen size – go with Kindle DX.

In the perfect world we would have Kindle Touch that would be the same size as Kindle 2 but with 100% area used by eInk touchscreen with multi-touch pan and zoom that would support PDF and have WiFi connectivity on top of 3G for unrestricted browsing but then we would also have pocket-sized fusion, world peace and the answer to life the universe and everything…

Kindle DX vs. Kindle 2

Ok, lets pick up where we left off: My Kindle DX has just arrived…

Unboxing Kindle DX

…

Kindle DX power up

Post #301…

Exterior & Ergonomics

Kindle DX is much larger and slightly heavier than Kindle 2. In fact If you put K2 on top of DX, K2 would be almost the same size as DX’s screen. It’s still comfortable to hold and flip pages, at least for right handed people like me. Of course it works upside down and it’s usable this way but I will pass on making a judgment on how comfortable such setup would be for left-handed people. One thing for sure – alphanumeric keyboard is not usable this way. Landscape mode is comfortable. As Kindle is rotated, 5-way controller is automatically remapped so left remains left and right remains right.

Amazon leather cover now comes with two magnets to keep itself shut. If you are still using floppy disks from the previous millennium you shouldn’t put them next to Kindle DX if you are using the cover.

Kindle DX vs. Kindle 2

Screen and fonts

It’s large. That’s for sure. 824×1200 pixels. It seems to update faster than Kindle 2 and whiles seems to be slightly lighter. There’s minimal ghosting sometimes just as on my second K2. The first K2 that was bricked by airplane didn’t have ghosting problem. Screensaver pictures seem to be the same as in K2 but upscaled and they do look gorgeous on the big screen. Fonts seem darker. So looks like Amazon took complaints about low contrast in Kindle 2 seriously and decided to address them. Spatial resolution is slightly lower – 150ppi comared to 167 in Kindle 2.

I’ve downloaded samples of some of the “books that look good on Kindle DX’s large screen“… Really they should be called “books that would have looked great on Kindle DX should have looked great on Kindle DX if images were not downsampled to lower resolution… I’ve checked 3 books and none looked as good as screensaver images. You could clearly see that illustrations in these books are much lower resolution than the screen. Hopefully this will get fixed as some point.

There are 7 font sizes just as in previous models. However the smallest font on Kindle DX seems to correspond to second smallest on K2. I can’t say for sure because I have Droid fonts installed on my K2 so that I can read Cyrillic. When font size dialog is invoked there are 2 additional options there that are specific to DX: “Words Per Line” and “Screen Rotation”. The second one is pretty much self-explanatory: you can explicitly select one of the four rotations or set it auto and let the accelerometer control it. “Words Per Line” really controls left and right margin width. Three available options are: default, fewer and fewest. At the moment I don’t quite understand the use of it. If I would want smaller screen area I’d just use K2. As this option is changed inline pictures as downscaled as well.

Screen rotation

Works as advertised – the image rotates as you rotated the device. Refresh time is good. Changing scren orientation is as fast as flipping a page.

Kindle DX Landscape

Keyboard

Keyboard layout is QWERTY. Numeric row is merged with top letter row. To enter numbers you need to hold the “Alt” button. If you just need to enter one digit, you can press “alt” and digit in sequence (“alt” is “sticky” just likethe “shift” button). On DX buttons stick out more and are harder to press. Overall I found K2 keyboard more comfortable and easy to use than DX. Except “Next page” button being larger on DX, buttons on the right edge of the device are identical. 5-way controller stick is higher on DX.

PDF support

Kindle DX relies on it’s large screen to display PDF files “as is”, without re-flowing the text (which would be next to impossible with PDF since the format lacks any concept of paragraphs or text continuity).  The only way to zoom that I could find is to switch to landscape mode. It’s not such a big problem because most PDF files that people would want to read are preformatted for either Letter or A4 page size and Kindle DX screen is comparable in size to these formats.

Although there is concept of pages in PDF and you can navigate to any given page, both internal and external links in PDF files are disabled. Structured table of contents that is present in some PDF files is not usable either.

Graphically PDF files look fine and crisp. Rendering time is also good. It usually takes around 5 seconds to open the file initially and after that pagination speed is the same as when reading ebooks.

It’s not possible to download PDF files to your Kindle via WhisperNet. Most likely this is because Amazon pays 12 cents per megabyte to Sprint while keeping Internet connection free for Kindle owners. Given decent support that Kindle DX has for PDF files, abundance of PDF files on the Internet that people would like to download and read and relatively large size of these files it wouldn’t be a good idea for Amazon to enable such downloads.

It so happens that in my past life I spent a lot of time writing software that would process PDF files. Some time later I’ll run a comprehensive test of PDF support in Kindle DX and publish the results here.

Basic Web

Web browsing seems to be that same as on Kindle 2. “Advanced mode” is now called “Desktop mode’”. Basic mode is still much faster and usable than desktop mode. I tried to render BlogKindle.com in desktop mode and DX actually rendered it quite well. The only problem I could see was the lack of PNG transparency support.

Kindle DX Basic Web

9 inch screen definitely makes browsing a better experience.

Text-to-Speech

There are seemingly no changes in this feature. Funny thing that I’ve noticed as I experimented with it that female voice seems to have trouble pronouncing word USB. With male voice turned on is sounds much more natural.

Software

Apart from PDF support, changes to font size dialog, picture viewer mentioned above and additional game mentioned below Kindle software remains the same. Kindle DX comes out of the box with firmware version: 2.1 (337560062). Source code for Kindle DX is already published by Amazon and I’ll take a look at it. What seems important is that it has a separate section for Kindle DX sources code. On this basis I would speculate that next version of software for Kindle 2 is going to be 2.0.4, for Kindle DX it’s going to be 2.1.1. These will come from separate branches of code so I wouldn’t hope too much for PDF support being ported to Kindle 2 any time soon.

Hacking

Unfortunately Kindle DX was unresponsive  to the “old way hacking”. When I created a small “update” using Igor’s tool to dump the system log along with full directory listing to the root of Kindle drive the “Update Your Kindle” menu item remained disabled. Either Amazon has changed the format of the update files or they’ve come up with some way to digitally sign them to prevent hacking. Either way this means no unicode fonts for Kindle DX for the time being :(

Easter Eggs

I did a quick check on Kindle 2 easter eggs.

• Minesweeper is still there. It’s accessible by pressing Alt–Shift-M in the home screen. If you press G after minesweeper is started you can play GoMoKu (it’s like tic-tac-toe but on a large board and the goal is to get 5 in a row). Kindle is actually a very good GoMoKu player. I played it twice and so far the score is 1-1 even though human player always gets the first turn.
• Picture viewer is also there. To activate it connect Kindle via USB cable to your PC and create “pictures” folder in Kindle USB disk. Create subfolders there and copy pictures. Subfolders will become “book” names and pictures will be pages. JPG, PNG and GIF files are known to be supported. Once you’ve copied the files, disconnect the USB cable and press Alt-Z in the home screen – you should see your picture folders among books now. Scaling options have moved from the main menu to font-size dialog. Kindle DX will never try to stretch image to fit the screen but it can downscale to either fit width, height or screen. You can also display image at actual size and use 5-way controller to navigate the image. Screen rotation is also supported.
• Symbol keyboard shortcuts are gone since numeric row is merged with the top letter row.
• Hidden settings are still there. Typing “411″ and “611″ (using the alt-key) open corresponding settings pages.

Conclusions

Kindle DX is a nice device. Perhaps it’s not as much better as people hoped it would be but Kindle 2 sets the bar quite high. For day-to-day book reading I would still recommend Kindle 2 because of greater portability. If you can’t get by without PDF support and don’t want to use Savory hack (that would add similar or better level support than what’s available in 2.1) – Kindle DX is right for you. Hopefully with time there will be digital media that would take advantage of Kindle DX’s large screen.

Stay tuned for more detailed reviews, second impressions etc…

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

I meant to publish this post yesterday but got carried away by other business. First of all – kudos to Amazon for timely shipment and large supply. I don’t think that anyone who ordered Kindle 2 was left without one. Sony should take the time to learn from this good example. A friend of mine was sitting on the fence until the last day and finally placed his order at 3PM pacific time on the 23rd and he received his Kindle about the same time I did – around 3PM pacific time on the 24th. I checked the Amazon website and looks as of today (February 25th there is no backlog) – you can still order and get it on the next day (or later if you want to save on shipping).

Here it is…

First impressions are really good. Amazon Kindle was a good thing to begin with and they didn’t do anything wrong in the second version. In fact I wouldn’t call it v2 (nor does Amazon say so anywhere on the device itself) – it’s a nice evolutionary development of well engineered device:

• Photos and pictures look better with 16 shades of gray rather than 4
• 5-way button is a bit more convenient than scroller (but that’s just my opinion)
• The geek in me misses the SD card slot as it (the geek) would like to eventually stuff entire library of congress in the device but the rational part of me realizes that 1.4GB is quite enough given that device is almost always online.

These are just my first impressions. I’ll keep using Kindle 2 and will post on my impressions again in 2 weeks, than in 1 month, then in 3. Of course I’ll post about other related topics much more often… Stay tuned.

In a scathing (yet hilarious) review of the Kindle, Robert Scoble – a former technical evangelist at Microsoft – states the following:

1. I want to meet the guy who designed the thing, and I want to beat the crap out of him.
2. It’s obvious they did not think about how the device was going to be used.
3. Amazon is a “cheap-ass company”.
4. In conclusion, “It really sucks.”

I take it he doesn’t like the Kindle device, fundamentally I think he is wrong, Kindle can be a success and whilst the Kindle does have its flaws, it certainly is not going to be a failure. Here are the 6 major criticisms of the Kindle Scoble cites;

1. No ability to buy paper goods from Amazon through Kindle.
2. Usability sucks. They didn’t think about how people would hold this device.
3. UI sucks. Menus? Did they hire some out-of-work Microsoft employees?
4. No ability to send electronic goods to anyone else. I know Mike Arrington has one. I wanted to send him a gift through this of Alan Greenspan’s new book. I couldn’t. That’s lame.
5. No social network. Why don’t I have a list of all my friends who also have Kindles and let them see what I’m reading?
6. No touch screen. The iPhone has taught everyone that I’ve shown this to that screens are meant to be touched. Yet we’re stuck with a silly navigation system because the screen isn’t touchable.

Now as far as I can tell, Scoble has 3 problems with the Kindle – Social Networking, eCommerce, and Usability. The usability seems fine to me on the Kindle, it takes about 30 seconds to figure out how to use the device and then it becomes second nature and most reviews have had a similar experience. In my opinion social networking has no place in a eBook device so that’s a moot point, however the ability to share your profile for thing like a book club might be something worth looking into. And finally eCommerce, the Kindle is a eBooks reader, not a supermarket! who wants to buy a toaster or mountain bike through a Kindle? I certainly don’t want to, I want to buy books and read on my Kindle. If I want to buy anything else, I will log into Amazon.com and purchase my goods that way. However, Scoble does have some valid points so the review is watching even if it it just to watch Scoble lose it.

You can check out the Videos here:

Amazon Kindle video #1. Unboxing.
Amazon Kindle video #2. Kindle first use.
Amazon Kindle video #3. Walking around with Kindle.
Amazon Kindle video #4. Mike Arrington on Kindle.
Amazon Kindle video #5. Books vs. Kindle
Amazon Kindle video #6. Me being a total jerk to Amazon.
Amazon Kindle video #7 (Interview at SF State University).

Source: Scobleizer

AppleInsider have just received their Amazon Kindle device and have uploaded an in-depth review of the Kindle along with some very high quality images of the unboxing process.

AppleInsider have done a good job with the unboxing process, unlike most unboxing pictures out there, AppleInsider have taken very high quality images, which are well lit. Good job from the guys at AppleInsider!

When I said earlier that the review was in-depth, I wasn’t kidding, the review is spread out over 5 pages and covers just about everything you can think of! here is an expert of the review where they are talking about the interface and navigation:

The biggest problem for E Ink is that it can’t redraw rapidly enough to support animation such as a mouse cursor or smooth page scrolling. Kindle attempts to work around this limitation using a scroll wheel to navigate between options on the page

Dialing a small roller up and down animates a silvery block cursor in an independent track that uses its own display that can update rapidly (above). This navigation track allows the user to select between options presented on a page, or to select a line of text which might include multiple hyperlinks within it. Once selected, a push down on the roller brings up a menu, typically including options to:

• select from one of the hyperlinks in the selected line.
• lookup a word in the selected line.
• jump to the Home page.
• visit the Kindle Store shopping page.
• navigate within the existing document to its front page, table of contents, a specific location, a sections listing, or user specified bookmarks.
• add notes to a document, highlight a selection, and access earlier notes.
• create bookmarks.
• save a selected page as a digital text clipping that can be output to a computer.

The right and left edges of the unit each have two large buttons: next and previous page buttons on the left, and next page and “back” buttons on the right. It seems logical that “back” and “previous page” would do the same thing, but that is not always the case. Sometimes back returns to a previous section, for example. It isn’t consistent enough to really be intuitive or predictable, however.

There is also a full keypad below the screen for entering text, along with alt, symbol, and search function keys and a button that brings up a menu to change the text display size used when reading a document. Between the E Ink display and the roller wheel cursor track, it’s quite easy and usually intuitive to figure out how to navigate around, but the slow page refresh is a significant problem that severely taxes navigation speed, as every menu presented involves a flash and a pause.

If your thinking of purchasing a Kindle, but are still unsure then you might want to check this review out, the review answers many questions about the Kindle device, Kindle accessories, the service and what Kindle is like to use every day.

Source: AppleInsider Unboxing Pictures
Source: Review: Page 1, Page 2, Page 3, Page 4, Page 5

The guys over at Macworld.com have reviewed the Kindle and they deliver a shocking verdict… it is revolutionary!

For those out there who are lucky enough to own a Kindle, it’s not really that surprising of a conclusion. It has literally changed the way we will consume our content in the future. All you have to do is read the many hundreds of blog posts about Kindle praising it and commenting on how it is the future, yet it has consistently been shunned by the main stream media as a gimmick or just an expensive toy. That is until someone actually goes out and review the thing and find out it is pretty darn good!

So lets just skim over some of the points made in the Macworld article on why Amazon’s Kindle will be a success.

1. Some Kindle owners will buy one to replace their paper books and magazines.
2. Fast, free broadly distributed wireless.
3. No PC required.
4. Option to sync up to a PC and manage your books from anywhere in the world.
5. $9.99 price tag for e-books which means you can buy more books.
6. Access Amazon.com and the Web to search Wikipedia via it’s free wireless connection.
7. Access to an experimental and free service called Kindle NowNow
8. Subscribe to RSS feeds.
9. Morning papers delivered before to your Kindle you wake up
10. Free PDF-to-Word converter.

If you want to read the full article then you can head over to Macworld.com and have a read.

Whilst browsing around the net looking for Kindle related news to bring to you guys I stumbled upon Pocketnow.com. The guys over there have uploaded a very good, in-depth video review of the Kindle, I thought I would share it with you guys on this blog. Now the videos are quite in-depth, and they are spread out over 4 video each one covering a different aspect of the Kindle device. The videos go into a lot of detail on how the device works and what it is like to use every day. So if you are interested in buying a Kindle in the near future I would highly recommend these videos as they will give you a flavour of what you can expect when you own a Kindle device.

Part 1

Talks about the carrying case of the Kindle, then give a tour of the hardware features of the device.

Part 2

Talks about the reading experience of the Kindle, and show off the electrophoretic display (aka E-Ink).

Part 3

Go over using the Kindle store and viewing Wikipedia.

Part 4

Covers viewing a newspaper with the Kindle, and go over a few experimental features that you can use on the device.

Source : Pocketnow.com Amazon Kindle Video Review

It appears that things are not well over at AllThingsD. Walt Mossberg, who is the principal technology columnist for the Wall Street Journal, reviewed Amazon’s Kindle e-book reader last month. Now this was surprising slow out of the gate for Mossberg so what happened? First lets see what Walt had to say about this Amazon Kindle first.

Mossberg in his review called the Kindle “mediocre” and “marred by annoying flaws” he even goes as far as saying “It is bigger and clunkier to use than the Sony Reader, whose second version has just come out at $300″. In his video review he also says there are too many flaws to list. You can watch the video of Walt Mossberg’s review of the Amazon Kindle at the end of this post. However he does also say in his review that Amazon hit the nail on the head with the shopping experience, which is hardly surprising seeing as Amazon.com is the largest bookstore in the world. All in all its seems that Mossberg is impressed with the idea and the online shopping expirience Amazon have created, but is not impressed by the device itself saying it is too big and clunky.

However, recently news came out from another tech columnist that Mossberg “was only interested in reviewing it if he could be first. When Steven Levy got it first Walt threw a tantrum.”. Wow, Steven Levy is a Newsweek tech reviewer who reviewed the Kindle a whole week before Walt. Steven Levy and David Pogue of the New York Times (Who was also amongst the first to review the iPhone) both got exclusive reviews, they also happened to gave the Kindle glowing reviews.

If that doesn’t make you wonder where his mind was at the time of the review, Mossberg also gives three iPod shout-outs in the first two paragraphs, too bad it wants a review for the iPod. C’mon Walt, we know you are getting old, but try to focus on the job in hand!

As promised, here is the video review;