Kindle 2 Finally Unveiled by Jeff Bezos
Kindle’s younger brother Kindle 2 is surely anorexic. Its 1/3rd of an inch! Jeff Bezos unveiled the e-book reading device at a press conference (press release here) in the Big Apple’s Carnegie Library which had Author Stephen King as a chief guest (who even read a story he had written, on the device).
So what’s new?
This one’s faster by 20%, will stay charged 20% longer and comes in 16 shades of grey, an upgrade from 4 in the previous edition. Kindle 2 also has about 7 times the storage space Kindle had and can store up to 1500 books. It also has a built in dictionary with 250,000 words and can be charged using USB cables apart from the usual charger. Also, using their Whispersync technology you can synchronize across Kindle 1, Kindle 2.0 and share the exact position in the book you were/are reading at. This will probably be available across other mobile devices in the future. It costs the same as the Kindle 1- roughly 360 USD. The entire list of specifications can be checked out on their website here.
At the same time with all the “its thinner than the iPhone” talk I can’t help but wonder if Amazon is also trying to specifically market the Kindle to the iPhone/iTouch loyalists.
So what’s next?
A colour Kindle? Probably not, as Bezos says in this interview with the Seattle Times, saying “I think it’s actually multiple years away.” He also hints that he would like to bring the Kindle Books to netbooks/mobiles saying “That’s what WhisperSync is about. We want to make Kindle a bookstore – the largest e-bookstore in the world, with 230,000 titles and growing. We want to make those titles also available on a bunch of different devices and then synchronize them with Kindle.”
So is everything goody goody? Not everyone is of that opinion. People are already whining about the lack of a SD card slot or removable batteries.
The device will be shipped Feb 24th onwards.
For a thorough comparison between the Kindle and the Kindle 2 do check out this website.
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– anyways it is too expensive for me to buy and too sleek and too sexy to be owned by me 