Amazon has launched the Kindle 3, and it’s available for pre-order right here and right now as the Kindle 3G! The new model adds performance, improved design, and attractive new features at the same sweet $189 price that tripled the sales of the previous model in recent weeks, and it will ship on August 27.
Also, Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos said in a statement, “If you don’t need the convenience of 3G wireless, we have an incredible new price point — $139 for Kindle Wi-Fi.” We’ll focus on the $139 Kindle Wifi
Major Performance Improvements. One indication of just how popular and successful the Kindle has been for Amazon over the past 33 months is that with each generation, the continuing improvement of the Kindle has kept it true to the initial product vision of a dedicated ebook reader. The Kindle will never be an iPad killer, but it doesn’t need to be. This new Kindle may look at first blush like a case of incremental improvements over the Kindle 2 as you run through the list of new features individually. Then when you take a step back or try it out for a while — as I had a chance to do a few days ago — it’s clear that the overall impact of its performance enhancements makes the total package more desirable and satisfying — as a dedicated ebook reader — than ever.
Big changes include:
- the new Pearl e-ink technology providing 50 percent better contrast, unveiled with the Kindle DX Graphite, due to lighter background and darker, clearer fonts;
- the classic Kindle 6-inch display in a super-thin Kindle body that’s 21 percent smaller and, at just 8.7 ounces, 15 percent lighter;
- a 20 percent faster screen refresh or page-turn speed;
- a choice of two case colors, the classic white or the new graphite case that I’ve found very attractive with the new Kindle DX;
- more than double the storage space from the 1,500 books accomodated by the Kindle 2 to a 3,500-book capacity that equals that of the Kindle DX;
- interactive PDF viewing with notes and highlighting;
- The longest battery life yet for a Kindle or any other ereader, according to Amazon: one month with the wireless turned off, and 10 days with the wireless turned on;
There are also dramatic improvements for those of us who want to get more usefulness out of the Kindle’s web browser:
- a faster, more navigation-friendly, vastly improved but still absolutely free web browser based on WebKit, the open-sourced Web browser engine that is also the basis for … wait for it … Apple’s Safari web browser;
- a new Article Mode feature within the updated web browser that, similar to Instapaper, simplifies most web pages to text-based content reading;
- an automatic toggle between 3G wireless and wi-fi connectivity that makes use of the best, fastest network available once you’ve synched it up with your home, office, or local coffee shop’s wi-fi interface;
Equally important, reading gets easier than ever for all of us, and especially for the visually impaired or anyone else with vision issues, with several new accessibility features:
- Text-to-speech is now augmented with new voice-guided text-to-speech enabled menus that allow us to navigate on the Kindle without having to read menu options or content listings and item descriptions on the home screen. The new Voice Guide audible menuing feature handles all of that.
- New hand-built, custom fonts and font-hinting make words and letters more crisp, clear, and natural-looking, including a very clean new san serif font.
- Amazon is also releasing a brand new lighted Kindle cover, sold separately for $59.99, that includes an integrated retractable LED reading light that never needs batteries and hides away into the cover when not in use. It lights the entire Kindle display without glare and draws its power directly from the Kindle’s battery through the new gold-plated conductive hinges that connect the Kindle to the cover.
- For those of us who like to read quietly in bed, the new Kindle features quieter page turns. As someone who had actually shifted to a smaller font some evenings so that those little next-page clicks wouldn’t disturb my sweetheart quite so often, I have to say that I love the subtlety of this kind of improvement, which demonstrates to me the extent that Amazon really drills down on usability issues. My only concern on this one is that, in touting it, Amazon’s press release goes distinctly off-message in claiming that “quieter page turns means you can read all night without disturbing your partner.” Someone in the PR department needs to read the memo on how the Kindle lets you read yourself blissfully to sleep while certain backlit devices that will go unnamed keep you up all night.
Hardware Changes. In addition to the first-time availability of a graphite case for a 6-inch Kindle, there are a few hardware changes that should enhance usability:
- The Home and Back buttons and the 5-way controller are on the front of the Kindle now, as opposed to the right edge, which makes the right edge a bit less busy and cluttered.
- The form factor of the 5-way controller itself has been transformed from the joystick-like fixture on previous models to a clickable pad surrounded by a clickable four-sided directional border, somewhat similar to a trackpad. This should result in fewer unintentional “delete” commands from the Home screen, if nothing else.
- Both the 5-way controller and the unit’s hardware keyboard appeared to me to perform better, with clearer and more immediate tactile feedback, than the input hardware on previous Kindle models. But I only worked with the new model for about half an hour, so I have nothing quantifiable to share with you on this.
The only negative, hardware-wise, for me, is that this new Kindle takes after the the Kindle DX in having done away with the dedicated number row at the top of the keyboard in favor of an ALT-enabled number row that does double-duty with the QWERTY row. Will I get used to that? Of course.
Which leads me to what was my first take on this new Kindle. In some ways, it could be the love child of the Kindle 2 and the relatively new Kindle DX Graphite, but we parents always want more for our children than we’ve had for ourselves, and so it is with the new Kindle.
(Note: this story was to be embargoed until 11 pm EST, but we are releasing it now that the new Kindle page is live.)
