What's New with the Kindle 2?
The Kindle 2 started shipping in earnest yesterday, and many who've been keeping abreast of the e-book reader may be wondering what exactly makes it differ from its predecessor besides it's looks. While it wouldn't make sense for us to give it a formal gadget review (since it's our product and we'd clearly be biased), we can give a side-by-side feature comparison between the two to help you understand better how the device has improved over the past year.
So for the curious, here briefly is a rundown of the most important changes and new features in the Kindle 2:
Obvious Stuff: The Cosmetics
It's thin. Real thin. The original Kindle was a little less than an inch (0.7") at its thickest point and it tapered on one side. The Kindle 2 is about a third of an inch (0.36") all the way across, about the thickness of a magazine. The back now has a stainless steel finish, removing the potential battery cover mishaps a few users were experiencing. The interface is much cleaner, replacing the scroll wheel and animated side cursor with mirrored side buttons and a simple five-way rocker switch. A lot of functions are consolidated to this rocker switch, letting you pull up, navigate, and select items in popup menus.
The 6"-diagonal screen is the same size but supports more shades of grey--16 shades versus the original Kindle's 4--making graphics easier on the eyes and making image-heavy content like blogs much more pleasant to read.
Faster Pages
The Kindle 2 just plain runs faster, with 20% faster page turns. It's one of those statistics that doesn't necessarily stand out on paper; but having both Kindles side-by-side, believe me it makes a difference.
Longer Battery
The battery lasts about 25% longer in the new Kindle. That means four days of reading with the wireless turned on, and up to two weeks with the wireless antenna turned off.
Text-to-Speech
Now the Kindle will even read your books to you. The text-to-speech function features a male and female voice that will recite book content through the onboard speaker or connected headphones. The text-to-speech works surprisingly well, though I personally found the male voice to be a little less "robotic".
No Memory Card Slot
You can play MP3s on the Kindle 2, but keep the 1.4 GB capacity in mind because the SD card slot has been removed in this version. Amazon backs up all your content purchases, though, so you can make room where you need to.
Web Browsing
Amazon's "Whispernet" 3G network will now let you peruse web pages in addition to downloading books. Wikipedia, Dictionary.com, and more are browsable right on the Kindle with no data plan or bills. I'm not going to lie--the web functionality's pretty limited and it's never going to replace a dedicated web browsing device, but it's great if you want to look up a word in a book you're reading, looking for a quick recipe, or want more background on the topic at hand.
Want to know more? Learn more about the Kindle 2 on Amazon.com.
--Aric A.
John M. on February 25, 2009 at 11:05 PM
This would be an awesome product if it had a memory card slot and a replaceable battery. If it had these two features, I would snatch it up in a heartbeat. It's probably cheaper to produce without these features, but you're cheating your customers when you make these kinds of decisions, amazon.com!!!!!!! The offer to store my contents on amazon's server just doesn't cut it for me. I want to store what I purchase on my own memory cards!!!!!
Ruben Ricardo on February 26, 2009 at 06:03 AM
Very nice blog.
I own a K2 and I love it so much.
This is the future.
N D on February 26, 2009 at 07:45 AM
I read some really thought provoking comments from Seth Godin's blog on the Kindle 2...some of these ideas would truly revolutionize how we read and how we discover new reads!
N D on February 26, 2009 at 07:46 AM
For some reason, the URL for that page didn't show up on my last comment so here it is:
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/02/reinventing-the-kindle-part-ii.html
jasers on February 27, 2009 at 11:54 AM
I think this is a good idea and all, but its just not something I will ever buy, I don't think. I have no problem reading from a kindle instead of a book. But, firstly, its very expensive. I hear the arguments that you can buy books cheaper on Kindle than the real books. You know what? I buy almost all my books used, so that is not true either. Just speaking from an financial/economical sense, the kindle just makes no sense for me.