As you may already know, Amazon is now shipping the new Kindle 2 e-book reader. To make things easier for my readers, I’ve compiled all of the information necessary in order to make a decision on whether or not to buy this sexy new gadget, including my own hands-on review. If in the end you do end up buying, please be a good samaritan and help support my site by purchasing it here; after all, a lot of long hours went into creating and maintaining this article. Thank you for your support!
Product Specifications
| General | Launch | November 19th, 2007 | February 9th, 2009 |
| Dimensions (LxWxH) | 19.1 × 13.5 × 1.8 cm | 134.62 x 9.144 x 203.2 mm |
| Weight | 292g | 289.16g |
| Color(s) | White | White |
| Included Accessories | Power adapter, USB 2.0 cable, Book cover | Power adapter, USB 2.0 cable |
| Display | Size | 6” diagonal | 6” diagonal |
| Resolution (HxW) | 600x800 | 600x800 |
| DPI | 170 | 167 |
| Colors | Grayscale (4 shades) | Grayscale (16 shades) |
| Medium | Electronic Paper | Electronic Paper |
| Hardware | CPU | 400MHz Marvell PXA255 | 532MHz ARM-11 Freescale MCIMX31L |
| Memory | 64MB | 64MB |
| Storage | 256MB (180MB Avail.) | 2GB (1.4 GB Avail.) |
| SD Expansion Slot | Yes | No |
| Software | OS | Linux 2.6.10 based | Linux 2.6.22 based |
| Battery | Type | 3.7V, 1530mAh lithium polymer, BA1001 model | 3.7V, 1530mAh lithium polymer, S11S01A model |
| Life | 3 days w/ wireless on | 4.5 days w/ wireless on |
| Charge Time | 2 Hours | 4 Hours |
| Removable | Yes | No |
| Input | Keyboard | QWERTY | QWERTY |
| Navigation | Select wheel, next/prev/back buttons | 5-way control button, next/prev/back/home/menu buttons |
| Audio | Speakers | Mono | Stereo |
| TTS (Text-To-Speech) | No | Yes |
| Connectivity | Carrier | Sprint | Sprint |
| Modem | EVDO/CDMA AnyDATA wireless modem w/ fallback to 1xRTT | EVDO/CDMA AnyDATA wireless modem w/ fallback to 1xRTT |
| USB | USB 2.0 port | USB 2.0 port |
| Headphone | 3.5 mm stereo jack | 3.5 mm stereo jack |
| Power | AC Adapter | AC Adapter |
| Media | Supported Formats | Kindle (.azw), Text (.txt), Unprotected Mobipocket (.mobi, .prc), MP3 (.mp3), Audible (.aa) | Kindle (.azw), Text (.txt), Unprotected Mobipocket (.mobi, .prc), MP3 (.mp3), Audible (.aa, .aax) |
Kindle 2 vs Kindle 1 - Quick Comparison
Thinner: At .36 inches, it’s 25% thinner than an
iPhone
Quicker: Pages now turn 20% faster
Lasts Longer: Lasts 25% longer
Easier to read: Displays 16 shades of gray (versus 4)
More Storage: Can store approximately 1,500 books
Better navigation: With the new 5-way controller
Better dictionary: Automatic definitions when you
highlight a word
Text-To-Speech: Have your Kindle read your book to
you in a male/female voice
Less Fuss: Harder to accidentally press a button
2 Kindle or not 2 Kindle?
Owners of the original Kindle will absolutely love the new
Kindle 2. Gone is the boxy odd-looking contraption that was angled to approach
the feel of a book but in practice simply felt wrong. Let’s not even talk about
the slider / wheel navigation system that seemed better suited to navigating
the book’s menu rather than its pages. Oh, and remember the horrific button
placement that led to the constant annoying accidental page-turning every time
you picked it up? Well goodbye to the old and in with the new!
You had me at “Hello”
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The Kindle 2 comes bundled with a charger and USB 2.0 cable.
As I took it out of its packaging, I immediately thought “iBook”. It looked
like an oversized iPod; white, thin, sleek and amazingly light yet sturdy. The
Kindle 2 has a very “clean” look to it, as if the design geniuses at Apple hand
a hand in its creation. The corners are now rounded instead of angular and the
keyboard has been revamped to look more like a regular keyboard in its
arrangement; the keys no longer rectangular but small and round. The navigation
buttons have been completely overhauled, the wheel and slider completely gone
and replaced with a 5-way controller that only ever-so-slightly protrudes from
its casing. The buttons no longer occupy the entire length of the device,
instead they are much smaller and feel tighter, so they’re harder to trigger if
you accidentally press on them. The slider power/sleep switch and 3.5mm stereo
headphone jack are located along the top side, volume control on the right, and
USB port on the bottom.
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The back is flat, smooth brushed-aluminum with stereo
speakers at the bottom. One thing missing is the SD slot, but this shouldn’t be
a deal-breaker considering the much improved 2GB storage capacity and the
ability to offload content that you no longer need. Frequent flyers will surely
miss the ability to be able to easily switch wireless mode on or off since this
functionality is now purely software-driven through a menu option. Also, the
battery is now inaccessible a-la iPhone/iPod but when the time comes Amazon
will replace it for free assuming it’s in warranty; otherwise they charge $59.
For those Kindle owners wondering how they would be able to reboot without
removing the battery, don’t worry; you can do so by holding the power switch
for 14 seconds.
Test-drive
After charging it for four hours, I was pleasantly surprised
as the charging indicator located at the bottom of the device goes green,
indicating a full charge; this is one of the many design touches that makes the
Kindle 2 a much more enjoyable experience than its predecessor. I turn on the
Kindle 2 and skim through the user-guide, navigate through the menus, and
experiment a bit in order to acclimatize myself to the new feel. The first
thing I notice is that the display is so much crisper thanks to the 16 shades
of gray, especially when viewing images such as the screensaver that appears
when the device goes to sleep. The fonts are smoother than ever and I genuinely
felt awed at how good it looked to the eyes; it genuinely felt as if I was
reading a sheet of actual paper - newspaper to be precise. The display screen
itself is nowhere near as hardy as the iPhone/iPod, so carrying it unprotected
in your backpack is definitely not recommended and will surely result in a
scratched surface. I have heard of a blogger that left his Kindle 2 under his
pillow and as he climbed into bed he leaned on his pillow with his elbow and
cracked the screen. Morale of the story: Invest in a protective cover for your
Kindle 2.
Navigating is much easier now thanks to the new 5-way
controller, allowing you to nudge it in the direction that you want the cursor
to move and pressing down when you want to select something. The screen
refreshes somewhat faster now (20% faster) as is evident while navigating your
cursor through the screen or flipping from page to page. A cool feature I’ve
noticed while navigating through the words on a page is that the definition of
the highlighted word appears automatically at the bottom of the screen. Further
experimentation with the dictionary revealed the newfound ability to lookup any
word in the dictionary, not just the highlighted one.
The search button is gone and in its place is a
significantly improved search system accessible from the menu. Selecting the
Search option takes you to a separate page with many different search options,
including the abilities to search the Kindle store, Google, Dictionary,
Wikipedia and Web in addition to your Kindle 2 content. You can also access
search capabilities by simply typing from wherever you are, bringing up a small
text search area at the bottom of the screen allowing you to search on the fly.
Newspaper subscription is no longer the laughable affair it
was with the original Kindle, so much so that I’ve actually cancelled my
dead-tree subscriptions in favor of the wireless delivery. Aside from the
obvious environmentally friendly aspects, the fact that I no longer have to
deal with all those piles of newspaper lying around occupying valuable
real-estate is such a relief, and I don’t have to worry about whether or not my
newspapers are going to be there every morning or if one of my less virtuous
neighbors is enjoying it instead. The front page contains a two-column list of
sections (eg. Front Page, International, Sports, Real Estate, etc…) that also displays
how many articles are contained within. Selecting a section results in a list
of articles containing a brief two or three-line excerpt. Selecting an article
allows you to read the article which can be browsed using the Previous/Next
page buttons. You can also quickly skip to other articles by using the 5-way
controller. There are no ads to wade through, keeping the newspaper content
compact and easy to navigate.
Blog readers will enjoy the ability to subscribe to and
browse through their favorite blogs on the Kindle 2. There are a few gripes
when it comes to handling the presentation, but nothing that a software update
can’t fix. For example, there’s currently no way to tell apart which parts of
the blog you’ve read and haven’t read which I find just a tad bit annoying, but
it’s nothing that can’t be fixed via a software update should it prove to be an
issue to a majority of users.
Extras
Text-To-Speech is a much-touted feature of the new Kindle 2,
but I’m not really sure who’s going to use this since visually-impaired people
will still need to look at the screen in order to activate it. Powered by
technology from Nuance (the makers of Dragon Naturally Speaking), the Kindle 2
offers the user a choice of male or female voice as well as the ability to
choose a reading speed. The voices are really not bad, but you can tell they’re
computerized. Pages turn automatically as the device reads to you, but the
implementation isn’t perfect since the computer doesn’t know where to pause at
times. Text-To-Speech is a feature that was initially advertized as being
always accessible, but Amazon has recently
conceded to the Author’s Guild and will be modifying the Kindle 2 in order
to allow authors to disable this feature, preventing users from having the
device read to them.
The Kindle 2 comes with the same experimental features as
the original Kindle, namely the browser and mp3 player, but they haven’t been
enhanced and remain awful to use. The browser is only useable on the simplest
websites and the only control you have over the mp3 player is the volume.
Amazon has provided a service for converting content to a
format readable by your Kindle, but it’s not perfect and for anything other
than simple documents I would suggest reading my article on Converting content
to your Kindle instead. For a $0.10 fee, you can send the file you want
converted to youramazonusername@kindle.com
and it will be delivered to your Kindle wirelessly. They also offer a free
service where you can send the file you want converted to youramazonusername@free.kindle.com
, but they will email the converted content to you instead and it’s up to you
to copy it from your PC to your Kindle. Keep in mind that their conversion
service will only accept Microsoft Word, PDF, HTML, TXT, JPEG, GIF, PNG and BMP
files.
Conclusion
I do a lot of technical reading and subscribe to a couple of
newspapers as well as my favorite blogs, and the Kindle 2 hasn’t failed to
impress. The ability to free myself from the physical bulk is such a relief,
and the fact that the Kindle 2 is so much more useable now turned me into a
true believer. The steep price is definitely an issue for most people, and I
still believe that content should cost much less. For example, one of my
technical books is listed on Amazon with a list-price of $49.99 but priced at
$38.99; the Kindle edition, on the other hand, is priced at a whopping $31.99.
That’s a savings of only $7 versus the hard-copy; not a real incentive to buy. Kindle
editions of the New York Times Best Sellers and New Releases, on the other
hand, usually go for only $9.99, so you may save on average a whopping 50% or
more.
Amazon has listened to its customers and delivered a
completely redesigned interface that works. If you can afford the price-tag,
then you can’t go wrong with what may possibly be the iPod of e-book readers.
When you're ready, buy it here!
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