So, for a little background, the Hunger Games Trilogy consists of The Hunger Games, Catching Fire and Mockingjay.  The setting of the trilogy is a futuristic country called Panem that is separated into 12 different districts. Two young teenagers from each district are drafted to participate in The Hunger Games each year.  Out of the 24 contestants, only one will live.  This country is a result of the collapse of the United States, and plays off of reality show culture.

The first book in the series, The Hunger Games, introduces Katniss, the main character of the series.  She takes her sister Prim’s place in the Games along with Peeta, the other representative in District 12.  They are out to woo their audience while outlasting their competitors, literally.  One reviewer quoted the movie “Jaws” when describing the nature of the torture this book:

“you don’t actually need to SEE the shark in order for it to be terrifying. Sometimes not seeing the shark is even worse.”

Catching Fire explores Panem’s political structure, and the rebellion that comes from the results of the previous year’s Hunger Games.  Katniss takes on more of a leadership role and the novel provides a great lead in for the final book in the series.

Mockingjay is a war story.  Panem is at war, and Katniss has to fight the battles while facing the ghosts that have cropped up after three years of relentless brutality.  The lives of her family and friends are at stake.  All of this has come from the government and the evil President Snow.  I have friends who have said that this book is a real thriller, and that they couldn’t put it down.

There is a bit of romance in this trilogy and physical violence of course, considering it is about fighting for survival. The mind torture is what makes the trilogy a hit with adults in what appears to be strictly young adult reading material.  The reviews are awesome.  Collins manages to take an idea that is not so new and adds a fresh spin to it.  She also adds a bit of humor to provide comic relief.  One Amazon.com book reviewer claims this is the first series that they’ve had such a strong connection with since Harry Potter.

Related Posts

• May 25, 2010 -- The Nation for Kindle (0)

• Sony PRS-650 is an upgrade of older Sony PRS-600 Touch Edition, featuring same 6″ 600×800 eInk Pearl screen as Kindle 3 but with touch layer. It is available in Black and Red colors. Expected price is $229.00
• Sony PRS–350 SC Pocket Edition is an upgrade of Sony PRS-300 Pocket Edition. It features 5″ 600×800 eInk Pearl screen with touch. Because of transition to touchscreen controls, PRS-350 reduced size and number of buttons and became noticeably smaller. PRS-350 comes in Pink and Silver colors. It’s going to be prices at $179.00
• Sony PRS-950 SC Daily Edition is an upgraded version of PRS-900. Currently there is little information about it even on official Sony website. It is knows that it will feature 7″ latest generation Pearl eInk with touch, 3G and WiFi wireless. Judging by the photos it will be roughly 7.7 x 5.0 x 0.42 inches large which makes it slightly shorter and thinner than its predecessor. I assume it’s also going to be somewhat lighter. Its estimated release date is November 2010 with price point of $299.00. It’s unclear what body color selection will be. For now only silver color seems to be available.

I’ve added new Sony readers to the interactive size comparison tool so you can get an idea how large are these devices relatively to one another.

Kindle 3 vs Sony PRS-650/350/950 Specifications

Notes:

* Little information is available about Sony PRS-950 at this point so this data is based on estimates and may be incorrect or incomplete

** Although official specifications state 8.7 oz weight for Kindle, it actually weights 8.2 oz. Although I don’t have any of the new Sony eReaders to weigh, PRS-600 that I have weighs exactly as per specification – 10.1 oz.

Sony PRS-350/650/950

Entire lineup of Sony PRS devices will feature touchscreen. In previous models Sony used resistive touchscreen that was overlayed on top of eInk. This resulted in significantly lower screen contrast than any other eReader (see Kindle 3 screen contrast comparison). This time around Sony is using infrared touchscreen technology. In a nutshell it consists of pairs of infrared LEDs and photosensors located around the edge of the screen. LEDs continuously shoot invisible beams into sensors (like in James Bond movies). Microcontroller analyzes which LED-sensor pairs are blocked and computes touch coordinates based on that. Needless to say that such system consumes a lot of power compared to other touchscreen technologies or good old buttons. This will translate into shorter battery life. The upside is having convenience of a touchscreen and excellent contrast that newest generation of eInk displays provide.

Sony devices became smaller and thinner than their predecessors:

• PRS-650 is noticeably shorter than Kindle 3 because since it lacks keyboard but it’s just a notch thicker. It’s also lighter either of Kindle models. 6″ eInk Pearl screen provides the same reading area, resolution and contrast as Kindle 3.
• PRS-350 is smaller and lighter still. This however comes at a cost of smaller 5″ screen. The screen has the same pixel resolution though is the same. So if you eyes are keen enough you will get the same amount of detail on it.
• PRS-950 is going to be only slightly larger and thicker than Kindle 3 while featuring larger 7″ screen. In absence of other data I will guess that it will have the same 600 x1024 pixel resolution as PRS-900. At the moment it’s unclear how much will it weigh.

Because of size reduction, all Sony devices transitioned from mini-USB to micro-USB connectors (same as Kindle) and got rid of separate non-standard charging connectors altogether. Perhaps with some luck you would be able to charge via USB cable and read at the same time (unlike PRS-600).

Reader software that wasn’t updated for more than a year (as opposed to Kindle software that received updates and features on a regular basis) got an overhaul with some features added:

• Number of available font sizes increased from 5 to 6
• One more English look-up dictionary was added along with 10 translation dictionaries. It’s unclear at the moment which languages are supported for translation or how will it work.

I will use my Sony PRS-600 review from last November as a baseline to gauge improvements in different areas.

Kindle 3 Weight

My largest complaint about PRS-600 back then was extremely poor screen contrast. Since PRS-650 will use exactly same display as Amazon Kindle 3 with nothing on top of it, Sony and Kindle 3 are tied in this department. The end result will only depend on the font handling in the software. It can make a huge difference as shown by Nook vs. Kindle 2 comparison example.

After that comes complicated and unintuitive software both on the device and PC. Getting 3 autoplay pop-ups (4 if you use both expansion cards) is ridiculous. Especially since one of the drives contains installation files for PC that you only need once. Wouldn’t it have been better to mount a single drive on PC and map memory cards and installer files there as folders? PRS-650 features page mentions “Intuitive Reader Library software makes it easy to download eBooks, manage your collection, and transfer titles to your Reader Touch Edition™. Reader Library software works with both PC and Mac.” Unfortunately for Sony so did PRS-600 feature page. Unless their software has improved much more dramatically than it’s description this round will definitely go to Kindle 3. It would be next to impossible to improve already easy and seamless download process on Amazon Kindle. It wouldn’t have been hard for Sony to match it but it doesn’t look like it happened. The only product in Sony eReader line that can offer the same ease getting books is PRS-900/950.

There were also smaller things like, changing the font size taking forever on Sony and the fact that after gathering dust on my shelf for one week I would find PRS-600 with completely drained battery and therefore unusable for 3 hours while it recharges.

My largest complaint against Kindle 3 is small paging buttons and uncomfortable position of the 5-way controller. As I now hold Sony PRS-600 and Kindle 3 in my hands I actually find turning pages on Sony more comfortable than Kindle 3 despite (or maybe because) of Sony’s larger size.

PDF support was one of the areas where PRS-600 clearly outdid Amazon Kindle. Since there is little room for improvement for Sony for the sake of this review we’ll assume that PRS-650 will have same PDF viewing features as PRS-600. Although Kindle has greatly improved in this department, table of contents and document links still don’t work. Perhaps it will get addressed in some future software update but for now this round goes to Sony.

As far a music goes, each device has it’s strengths and weaknesses:

• Amazon Kindle has built-in speakers, while Sony does not
• Sony has a fully functional MP3 player software while Kindle can only sequentially cycle though audio tracks
• Kindle can read your content out loud with text-to-speech while Sony can not
• Kindle fully supports DRM-audio books from Audible.com while Sony is limited to DRM-free audio content

So it really depends on what you intend to do with the device. If you are an audio book fan – definitely go with Kindle since it can play DRMed audio books and turn almost any text book into audiobook. If you want your eBook reader to also be your MP3 player – go with Sony. If you already have MP3 player that supports audiobooks and prefer to use that then apart from text-to-speech support on Kindle, it doesn’t really matter.

Because of built-in speakers and “Voice guide” menus Kindle is now a fully accessible device for blind readers.

While it’s easy to scribble notes on PRS-600, when it came to typing on on-screen keyboard, it was a much worse experience than typing on Kindle keyboard. So unless this aspect improved greatly, Kindle will win the note-taking round. With recent software update Kindle also allows you to share your highlights and annotations via Twitter and Facebook.

Since none of the Sony readers have web-browsers (with only a slight chance of PRS-950 getting one) and Kindle 3 got an excellent WebKit-based browser that can load even complex AJAX websites such as desktop version of Gmail and said browser works over free 3G connection compliments of Amazon, this round clearly goes to Amazon Kindle.

While Kindle case is made of plastic, Sony devices feature aluminum bodies and come in different colors.

This being said 99% of readers spend 99% of their time reading books rather than browsing the web, annotating or listening to music. So reading experience is what eReaders should be judged on. With identical screens and comparable (though slightly better in Sony) ergonomics reading thought he book should be very comfortable on either device.

However getting books to read is a separate story. While both devices can store thousands of books, there are millions of books out there and I never know which one I’m will want to read next or if I’ll finish reading another Dark Tower book series and would want to read the next one or will quit reading it in the middle and would want to read something else. This is why I consider  global 3G wireless connectivity as a “must have” feature of good eReader. WiFi may be also acceptable for people who don’t travel much or have smartphones that can serve as mobile hotspots.

Of Sony readers only PRS-950 will have wireless connectivity. And while it maybe comparable in some features to Kindle 3, it will cost $110 more which is significant given the fact that eReader prices are flirting wit $99 threshold right now.

In the matter of book selection, it’s hard to tell a clear leader. Amazon, Sony and B&N book selections largely overlap but there are some exceptions so before buying an eReader, check out Amazon Kindle Store, B&N and Sony Book store to make sure that the books you care about are available on the device that you are buying.

With Sony PRS-650 you can the option of library eBooks in DRM-ed PDF. While it may sound nice, my local library doesn’t have a great selection of eBooks available to be checked out. I don’t know if it’s just my library or general state of things.

Related Posts

• November 29, 2009 -- Sony PRS-600 Touch Edition Review (8)
• December 8, 2009 -- Sony PRS-600 Karma Strikes Back (1)
• October 6, 2009 -- I’ve just received my Sony PRS-600 Touch Edition (1)
• September 23, 2009 -- Sony Reader Touch/Pocket vs. Kindle (2)

I’ve been tracking number of amazon.com books and blogs for Kindle since March 2009. Previously I published these numbers on a monthly basis. With Kindle 3 released and getting great reviews it’s time I did so again.

Amazon.com Books for Kindle Count

There were 242,488 Kindle books when I started keeping track back in March 2009. Since then this number almost tripled to become 685,380. By looking at the graph you can see that apart from bump here and there the number of Kindle books still grows in a linear fashion. Largest spike to date (roughly 70K books) was in May 2010.

Amazon.com books by Genre

As you can see the majority of growth happened in non-fiction and history genres. Now lets dig deeper into smaller categories.

Amazon.com Book For Kindle By Genre

If you look at this graph carefully you will see that back in 2009 “Comics & Graphic Novels” and “Cooking, Food & Wine” categories didn’t exist at all. They first appeared in October 2009 and May 2009 respectively.

Amazon.com Blogs For Kindle Count

Number of blogs more than doubled since I started keeping track and just crossed 10,000 mark several days ago. Although you can only subscribe to blogs that published themselves on Amazon Marketplace, you can still read the rest in the browser. Although this is not as convenient.

Amazon.com Blogs For Kindle By Category

As you can see, most of the growth can be attributed to “Lifestyle & Culture” category.

So effectively the amount of content available for Kindle more than doubled over last 18 months. Impressive, isn’t it? But if we look past raw numbers, the picture can definitely be better. eBook industry right now is where digital music industry was years ago. Publishers are still wary of the new technology and sometimes don’t want to deal with it. While Amazon as a store works hard to get the most bang for the buck by signing on books from bestseller lists (and I have to admit they do a good job at it too) many great by not so currently popular books stay overboard.

Try searching for Robert Heinlein books on Kindle for example. You’ll find only six. But don’t rush to trade your Kindle in for Nook, Sony eReader or even iPad – you will find exactly the same selection there – I’ve checked. However if you head over to pretty much any torrent tracker you will find full Heinlein bibliography floating around in zipped PDF files. So while publishers cling to their old business models or argue who is going to charge whom and how much, books are being pirated because there is absolutely no way to get these and other works of literature in digital form. Hopefully it will get better just as it did with music industry.

I’ll wrap up with the usual daily Kindle 3 checkup. There are 264 (up 44 from yesterday) Kindle 3 reviews so far on amazon.com with the following breakdown: 179 – 5 positive star, 42 – 4 star, 10 – 3 star, 10 – 2 star, 23 – 1 negative star. Kindle 3 is still backordered until September 17th.

Random Posts

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

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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

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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

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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

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Kindle 3 vs Nook : Thickness comparison

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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

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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.

Related Posts

• June 24, 2010 -- Kindle vs nook: What Do You Get? (12)
• May 21, 2010 -- Amazon Announces Update for Kindle for PC Application (0)
• May 5, 2010 -- The Nook Surpasses Kindle in Sales for March (1)
• April 19, 2010 -- New York Times Hikes Kindle Subscription Price (4)

• 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!

Related Posts

• August 29, 2010 -- Kindle 3 Review Follow Up (8)
• April 23, 2010 -- Improved eInk Displays (0)
• April 21, 2010 -- eInk in the Military (2)
• April 6, 2010 -- eBook emphasis plays to iPad’s weaknesses. (11)

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.

Related Posts

• August 30, 2010 -- Kindle 3 Positive Reviews Summary (0)
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• June 28, 2010 -- Unicode Fonts Hack updated for Kindle Software 2.5.2 and 2.5.3 (3)

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.

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The S60 includes a stylus that allows the reader to make notes and annotations.  I really like the idea of using a stylus over using the the keyboard on the Kindle and Kindle DX.  The Kindle’s keyboard is tiny and adds unnecessary space.  The drawback would be having to keep up with the stylus.  If the S60 is anything like the Nintendo DS, Nintendo’s handheld gaming device, it should include a slot for the stylus when it isn’t being used.

The S60 is Wi-Fi only so you would have to download books from home or a Wi-Fi hot spot.  Amazon offers a choice of Wi-Fi or 3G versions of the Kindle.  As for book formats, the device includes ePub, PDF and TXT files, as well as MP3 and text to speech options.

Samsung is a great company known for its well designed electronics. The sleek design of the S60 holds great promise and possible competition for the Kindle, however, it is still a bit pricey and is currently targeting the UK market.

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If you aren’t familiar with Hiaasen’s work, one of his older novels, Stormy Weather, is a good one to start with.  It is set in Florida, which is the setting for most of Hiaasen’s books, during Hurricane Andrew, a devastating hurricane that struck Florida in the mid 1990′s.  The plot involves scam artists, corrupted politicians who are destroying the environment and an offhanded swipe at Disney World.  Reviewers say that Hiaasen manages to let his imagination run wild with outrageous characters, but somehow the story maintains a natural flow.

Skinny Dip is another novel that Hiaasen is well known for.  Chaz Perrone finds out that his wife Joey has discovered his dealings with a crooked tycoon to pollute the Florida Everglades.  He tries to throw her off a cruise ship to get rid of her, but she survives and seeks revenge.  She does so by messing with his mind and driving him insane.  Not knowing what someone is going to do can definitely drive a person nuts.

I think it is awesome that Hiaasen just lets his imagination loose when setting up the plot for his books.  He touches on issues that are very real in today’s society.  But, his books are much more of a beach read flavor than a philosophical discussion one.

Have you read any of Hiaasen’s books?  What do you think about them?

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Amazon might be able to compete more closely with the iPad if it creates a tablet like device with a color screen and better internet access.  However, by going to a LCD color display, the company would be abandoning it’s stance on providing a pleasurable reading experience that simulates the experience of reading a regular book.

A recent article from Bloomberg Business Week suggested that Amazon resell items that are already popular in it’s marketplace.  That would save the hassle of creating a new product, and they could still make a decent profit from it.

I think Amazon should focus on the Kindle Books by working with the publishers to make the digital quality better and the prices more affordable.  The Amazon Kindle app. is available on many different devices, including the iPad, and books can be transferred from one device to another.   The recent drop in price and Wi-Fi only model was a smart move on Amazon’s part because the newest Kindle is now sold out.   A cheaper Kindle means consumers can make up for the cost in buying more books.

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For those of you familiar with Conroy’s works, his books are for the most part set in Charleston, and have an uncanny ability to provide hilarity mixed in with some extremely deep and troubling circumstances.  He deals with murder, prejudice, rape, family issues and the power of friendship.  The Lords of Discipline is especially intense, set in a military academy, but even it manages to have comic relief.

South of Broad is Conroy’s first book in 14 years.  The reviews are all over the place.  Conroy manages to touch on all of the themes of his previous books, but some reviewers say that the book is jumbled and even a bit trashy.  I thought the humor in South of Broad covered up the troublesome issues a little more than his earlier books, and Leo, the main character, sure is a smooth talker.  The deeper issues in this book were tinged by comical moments so much so that I didn’t take them as seriously as I took the events in say, The Prince of Tides.

Leo, or Leopold Bloom King, is the narrator of the book and is stumbling is way through life following the death of his brother.  His dialogue with his overly religious mother cracks me up.  This book has a strong Catholic undertone and the plot runs from the 1960’s to the 1990’s.  The plot takes such unexpected twists and turns that it definitely keeps you on your toes.

Conroy has a new book called My Reading Life coming out in November that features anecdotes from his own reading experiences.  I am sure there will be plenty of humor.  Overall, I really enjoy Conroy’s books and his ability to add humor into such troublesome situations, but I can’t really decide which one is my favorite.  Has anyone read his books and have one they particularly like best?

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There are some heart wrenching moments in this book, and Gruen touches on heavy issues such as animal cruelty, human-animal bonds, the experiences of being a misfit and living life in a nursing home.  It was interesting to hear from the viewpoints of the people who have to live as a freak in the circus, or who go to a nursing home knowing that is where they will die.  Gruen has definitely done her research into the circus life and lingo.  This novel has a lot of depth to it that makes it much more than a simple beach read.

Gruen, also known for her earlier sequels, Riding Lessons and Flying Changes, has a new book called Ape House coming out September 7. Ape House features the communicative behaviors of bonobo apes.  It presents another human-animal bond that is present in all of Gruen’s books.  One of the critics says that this book does not fare very well compared to its predecessor, however, another critic says that it is a wonderful book.  So it is a matter of preference I suppose.   Water for Elephants will be a tough one to beat.  It was published in 2006 and still remains in the Kindle Top 100 list.

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In “Shuffled Row,” you race to see how many words you can make from 60 letter tiles.  Both games are fun but maintain a literary element.  The best part?  Both of these games are free!  Hopefully, there will be more free or low priced games to choose from in the near future.  Unfortunately, these games are not available for the original Kindle.

The reviews are very positive.  Both games are a lot of fun and addictive.  Even the graphics got good reviews, contrary to the complaints about graphics on Kindle magazines.  As word games, they seem to enhance the core goals of what the Kindle is meant for, which is reading.  Both games are also good fillers for when you are in between books or not in the mood to tackle a whole book.

Has anyone tired these new games?  So far, Amazon is only emphasizing the literary aspect of the Kindle.  It will be interesting to see if Amazon continues to take that route, or whether they will add more games that are not literary in nature.



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Eat, Pray, Love chronicles the events of the year following Gilbert’s sudden decision that she didn’t want to be married anymore.  She spends her time in Italy, India and Bali enjoying the culture while searching deep within herself.  I was amazed at how well she captured her experience with the yogis in the Ashram in India.  While reading, I felt like I was right there with her experiencing the same enlightened emotional response that she did during meditation.

Some reviewers argue that this book is self centered, annoying and obtuse because Elizabeth Gilbert focused on herself, and not the political issues in the countries that she visited.  The counter argument is that this is meant to be a book of self discovery and is meant to be taken with a  bit of humor while Gilbert fumbles her way along that path.

The reader gets a chance to learn about spirituality, life and relationships in a lighthearted, witty manner as opposed to a wise and more serious one.

Committed, Gilbert’s newest book about marriage, has a completely different tone than Eat, Pray, Love.  It discusses what marriage is and isn’t, and the implications of transitioning from an independent life to spending it with someone else.  Gilbert addresses marriage as an institution that has been through a lot of analyzing  and has evolved a great deal over the centuries.  How has this institution remained intact despite these changes?

Some reviewers thought Committed was too chatty, whereas others pointed out that the deeply personal insight into Gilbert’s life made them uncomfortable.  It is all a matter of preference and what you take from it.

Both books are geared towards women and their viewpoints on marriage, spirituality and relationships.  Each book has its unique strengths and weaknesses, and are not meant to be compared to as sequels to each other.

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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.

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A while ago I guestimated that Kindle 3 launch would be a great opportunity for Amazon to release Kindle App store and take the KDK out of closed beta. This guestimate turned out to be correct.

Both applications are quite predictably word games. Games seem to be the most numerous and popular application type on mobile platforms. Word games in particular are very likely to appeal to reading crowd which is the core of Kindle user base.

The goal of Shuffled Row is to construct words from available letter tiles. Up to 9 letter tiles are available at any given time. New tiles appear pretty fast. Once the rack is full, oldest tile starts disappearing. This process is also pretty fast. Once you construct a word, tiles comprising this word are also gone from the rack. Using rare letters yields more points (Z is 10, V is 4, etc). So does constructing longer words (4 letter word gets 2x multiplier, 5 letter – 3x, etc up to x7 for 9 letter word). If you submit something that game doesn’t consider a valid word, the letters are gone from the rack and no points are awarded. If you finish the game with empty rack you get 10 point bonus. Overall I would say that the game is very exciting to play and it is surprisingly dynamic from an app running on hardware with eInk screen (I’m playing it on 1st generation Kindle DX right now). Amazon did a great job of designing game mechanics in such a way that only small portion of the screen is updated at any given time and even that with just 2 colors (which is the fastest way to update eInk screen). Because “Shuffled Row” is such e dynamic game, I wouldn’t call it a relaxing time-killer but rather a very engaging brain-twister. On the first attempt I’ve scored 321 which is not bad considering that English is my second language. Since 60 letters are shuffled differently every time, no two games are the same.

In Every Word you need to uncover words on the board by constructing them from scrambled sets of letters. Unlike “shuffled row”, constructing the word doesn’t eliminate letters from the board. You can immediately reuse them to construct the next word. Game consists of 10 levels. You advance to the next level by uncovering the one of the longest words on the board. Quite often there is only one longest word on the board and each time that I’ve played it consisted of all of the available letters. Game has “relaxed” and “timed” mode. Relaxed mode doesn’t have a time limit. In timed mode you are given 3 minutes to complete each level. This not much at all. If you are stuck in “relaxed mode” you always have the option to forfeit the game and see the answers (which I do quite often). So depending on the mode the game can be either a brain-twister or relaxing time-killer.

Both games rely on vocabulary and therefore are quite large (around 1 megabyte of compressed data). Both games set a high standard for other Kindle games to come in terms of graphics, dynamics and usability on eInk display.

Both “shuffled row” and “every word” are a welcome addition to my Kindle library as they add useful time-wasting functionality to the device without taking away from it’s main function – reading. While Kindle will never be able to compete in gaming with devices such as Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) iPad or Nintendo (PINK:NTDOY) DS, adding these games is similar adding a nice crossword puzzle to already interesting newspaper.

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UK Kindle

While the Kindle has long since become an international phenomenon with customers found all over the world, many people are surprised to find that there have been significant shortcomings to being a Kindle user outside of the US.  Sure, the books are digital property and take a lot less time to ship than if you decided to import a sofa, but delivery time isn’t everything.  Up until now, users in the UK have been forced to pay extra for all of their eBook purchases, simply for being outside the United States.

The launch of the Kindle Store UK is currently scheduled for August 27th, coinciding with the release of the new Kindle 3, though I’m told that Amazon(NASDAQ:AMZN) insists that it be called simply Kindle, and in preparation has begun selling the Kindle directly from the Amazon.uk site for the first time.  This should mean no more import fees or expensive overseas delivery charges, if all goes well, as well as an end to any obnoxious side effects and hassles from the necessity of converting currency into dollars.

Apps are already being updated to incorporate this new development, with Android already rolling out and iOS being expected in the near future, so there need be no thoughts that this is beneficial to just eReader owners.  As the platform localizes, UK readers can surely expect to see a larger selection(especially of native UK authors), better prices, and more attention to the region’s specific demands.  If all goes well, it doesn’t seem unreasonable in the slightest to expect to see further nationalization of the Kindle platform across the international community.  If anything, the fact that character support in the new Kindle software has been expanded would seem to hint that this is definitely on the books.  This is exactly the sort of move that Amazon needed to further ensure that their eBook application becomes the default for the industry in the long term.

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So, can we expect to be seeing eBook-based curricula and eReaders on the student shopping lists in the near future?  It’s difficult to say for certain, but chances aren’t great in most places.  Given the new features, and especially the $139 pricing of the Kindle WiFi, it seems a more viable option than ever before for new students.  It will take years for it to truly establish a presence, however.  Doing analytical reading on such a device requires completely different notation habits than are currently espoused by most students and professors, so our most likely early adopters in the education scene are going to be incoming students without much in the way of established habits.  I think it’s going to happen, especially in the humanities, but it’ll take time and exposure, since there’s more to academic reading than simply turning the pages and enjoying yourself.

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Fly Away Home is about a politician’s wife named Sylvie and her two daughters, Diana and Lizzie.  In the wake of scandal, mother and daughters have to look deep within themselves and figure out who they are and what they stand for.  In her usual fashion, Weiner manages to delve into serious issues while adding in some comical moments as well.

Reviews for the book were mixed.  Many said that this book was a delightful summer read, and fit Weiner’s style perfectly.  Others said it fell a bit flat.  An interesting point that one reader made was that Fly Away Home references to important political wives such as Elizabeth Edwards, Jenny Sanford and Silda Spitzer.  All of these women have faced difficult marriage situations in the public political arena.

Weiner’s debut novel, Good In Bed, was a huge success.  It is about a young woman named Candace “Cannie” Shapiro, a Philadelphia Examiner reporter who has weight issues.  This book deals a lot with self worth and body image, which are very applicable for women in today’s society.

Weiner is also known for her novel, In Her Shoes, which was made into a movie featuring Cameron Diaz.  This novel focuses on two sisters.  Rose is smart, successful lawyer but is quite dull in appearance. Maggie is beautiful, but isn’t too book smart.  This book touches on the power of family and the bond that sisters can share.  It also touches on jealousy and the strengths and weaknesses of the traits that each sister portrays.  Out of the three or four books I’ve read by Weiner, this one is my favorite.  I have yet to read Fly Away Home, but it is definitely on my list of books to read for the Kindle.

Weiner’s books are great summer reads, but they also manage to touch on important issues such as life, family, friendship, self worth and body image in a easy to read and often hilarious manner.

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Fortunately, Amazon(NASDAQ:AMZN) seems to have come up with a simple and effective solution in the form of a very nice looking, light cover for your eReader that draws on the battery in the device itself to power a small but powerful LED reading light. The Kindle Lighted Leather Cover currently comes in seven colors, doesn’t weigh you down with bulky batteries or annoying cords, and costs about $60.  It’s difficult to say, just yet, whether or not the power drain from the light will be a major concern, but it would seem doubtful given the greatly increased battery life of the newly updated Kindle and the notoriously low power draw of quality LED lights.  This seems like a great idea for anybody who likes to read in bed without disturbing somebody, or even just those of us who don’t do all our reading inside.

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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.

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Here’s what we’re going to be looking at:

• Higher Contrast Display, such as has recently been seen in the Kindle DX Graphite
• Slightly Streamlined Body: 21% smaller, 17% lighter, but with no sacrifices to screen size
• Improved Battery and Main Memory Storage, which with the release of Collections a few months ago finally proves incredibly useful
• Built-in WiFi Connectivity: This is huge.  Connect and download books even in areas where reception is horrible?  You’d better believe I’ll take it
• 20% Faster Refresh Rate
• Enhanced PDF Navigation, again much like what we’ve seen in the DX
• New Kindle Software will support some international characters – Cyrillic (Russian), Chinese, Japanese and Korean

Now, I’ll freely admit that the only thing I was set to care much about was the improved screen.  And, to address that point, it looks like it will be as amazing as could be hoped for. That said, I love the body redesign.  It’s smaller, lighter, easier on the eyes, claims to have quieter page turn buttons, a more pleasantly textured backing, and has done away with the annoyingly protruding navigation stick in favor of a directional navigation pad.  If there were ever a reason not to Kindle, it’s flown right out the window.

So far all pre-orders are due to be shipped on a release date of August 27th.

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Now, will this be the much anticipated Kindle 3?  No idea.  The timing seems right in a lot of ways, but this could just as easily be a minor cosmetic update in the interests of giving Amazon(NASDAQ:AMZN) a further edge in the eBook market.  Either way, August should be a good month for fans of the device as we can be fairly sure to see something new.  Personally, all I really care about is the new screen.  That Graphite DX model is very nice to read on.

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By all accounts, this is a solid piece of software.  It seems to have most every feature we’ve come to expect in eReader applications for cellular devices, and an intuitive functionality very similar to that of the popular Kindle for Android application.  I like having multiple font options a lot, and I can see the use for having additional font sizes even if I’m perfectly happy personally with the usual ones available on either app.

The one place that the nook app falls short, and it is kinda a big deal, is the complete lack of brightness and background controls.  While it is obviously likely to be difficult to get something like that to work across a broad range of hardware profiles and other such difficulties, it is almost essential to have these features when reading on most cell phone types of screens.  It’s a neat piece of software and I honestly believe that it is superficially better than anything else I’ve seen so far, short of buying a Kindle or nook or something, but when it comes to regular use you’ll be hurting for more control over the screen rather quickly.

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This only serves to emphasize for us how the shifts in the way the publishing industry operates are going to effect us as time moves on.  First we have Kindle book sales overtaking hardcovers, now we have authors managing to sell in the millions of copies range.  It is becoming increasingly clear that while print is far from dead, there is little chance for the traditional model to reassert itself.  As time goes on and more authors find themselves members of this exclusive group, we can only hope that the achievement will continued to be noted, both for these authors and for the eBook industry in general.  It can’t be seen as anything but truly impressive.

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