This morning Amazon officially announced its second-generation ebook, the Kindle 2 (although leaked photographs of the device have been floating around the internet for some time now).
All-in-all, the new Kindle is a modest step up from the first generation, introducing nothing too radical to the design or functionality but improving the device in a variety of incremental ways.
So just what’s new and different? We’ll take you through the highlights below. If you’ve spotted any other important differences, please let us know in the comments.
- The new Kindle is slightly lighter. The first generation weighed 10.3 ounces while the second weighs only 10.2 ounces
- It’s much less ugly. Gone is the retro look of the first generation for a curvier and more symmetrical design that (like every other mobile device hitting the market these days) borrows elements from the iPhone
- The screen has a higher wow factor At six inches tall, it can display 16 shades of gray, and it can turn pages
20 times20% faster (or so Amazon claims) - It can actually speak to you Amazon’s new Text-to-Speech feature will use a computerized voice to read any book to you in one of three speech rates, and in either a male or female voice
- The new controls are better designed. Instead of a weird slider on the right-hand side that’s used to move from line to line, there’s a new 5-way joystick. The keyboard is also no longer split into two regions like those funky desktop keyboards you see at Fry’s but never buy.
- There’s been no price drop It still costs roughly the same amount ($359) but at least there’s still no monthly wireless fee for downloading books, magazines, etc.
- It can hold a much bigger library Storage has been boosted to 7x the original size, allowing the device to carry over 1,500 titles at a time
- You can read for longer. With a 25% longer battery life that is intended to let you read for up to 2 weeks without a recharge
- It downloads content just as fast. Amazon is touting 60 second downloads for books, etc. — the same rate it gave for the first Kindle
- You can pick up your reading on a separate Kindle. I’m not sure how useful this will actually be for people, but a new feature called “Whispersync bookmarking” makes it possible to start reading a book on one Kindle then continue reading it on another, just where you left off
- It still comes in only one color. White
Some other important facts about the Kindle:
Amazon has sold 230,000 kindles to date, which makes up a whopping 10% of the total units sold by the companyApparently, there’s been some confusion. Per a comment below, “They mean that there’s 230,000 books available on the site, and that kindle book purchases make up 10% of all book purchases. Nothing was said about actual kindle sales numbers.”- The new Kindle is available for pre-order now and it’ll start shipping February 24th. Owners of the previous Kindle will get prioritized shipping if they order by tonight, and anyone who has already ordered (but not yet received) the first Kindle will automatically have their orders upgraded to the new one.
- The Kindle Store now carries 230,000 books, up from the 90,000 available when the first Kindle launched
- 103 of the 110 New York Times best sellers are available, just a slight improvement over the 101 available at the first device’s launch
- Jeff Bezos has talked about how Amazon is working to get the Kindle’s books on other mobile devices. No word yet on which and when, but Amazon has competition here.
- You can synchronize your purchased content between first and second-gen Kindles (most useful for those who upgrade, presumably). And in the future, when Amazon rolls ebooks out onto mobile phones, you’ll be able to sync the e-literature with those devices, too.
For more, check out the following coverage on CrunchGear:
- Live At the Amazon Kindle Event
- Photo comparison between the Kindle 1 and 2
- Video: Kindle 2 As Slow as the Original
- Hands on with the Kindle 2
something doesn’t sound right about the comment
“Amazon has sold 230,000 kindles to date, which makes up a whopping 10% of the total units sold by the company”
Apparently Bezos said this in his speech. Confirming though since it does sound high
Plus it isn’t logical.
That is the same thing I am wondering about.
It just sounds like another way Amazon is trying to promote itself and monopolize the market, so that we all buy their sub-par readers.I love eBooks, and I’m glad that Amazon’s position as a major entity is calling attention to eBooks. However, Amazon’s proprietary format is a HUGE problem. I don’t want to be locked into buying eBooks from only one source, and I want to be able to read my eBooks wherever I am – including on my desktop at work. I used my sister’s Kindle for a few weeks last year, and was unimpressed. There are great alternatives out there – I currently use the Cybook, which is lighter, more attractive, cheaper, and I can buy eBooks from a variety of sources (more about the Cybook). The Kindle, while frequently touted as a “huge leap forward”, really exemplifies why so many people are hesitant to try eBooks—and is preventing the popularity of ebooks from growing faster so that I can get all the titles I want in ebook format.
No SD memory card slot?
Really?
What’s up with that?
I have the first version, this isn’t worth upgrading.
Page turning “20 times” faster? Amazon says 20%
Congratulations Amazon! that’s the way! there are still companies that bet on ebooks future, an amazon is a big player.
They mean that there’s 230,000 books available on the site, and that kindle book purchases make up 10% of all book purchases.
Nothing was said about actual kindle sales numbers.
Thanks corrected
Can someone tell me, why we simply cannot get the Plastic Logic Reader instead of this Tablet full of knobs and mousetraps to klick on something I hav not intended to click on?
http://www.plas...om/product.html
THIS looks like the kindle I would buy immediately. Kindle 2 does not make me even have a look at my credit card.
The Plastic Logic won’t be on sale until the Kindle 3 is shipping, at the earliest.
The company announced today that it postponed its 2009 launch to 2010 b/c of the recession.
I don’t agree that it is “much less ugly”. It’s only slightly less ugly.
“It can turn pages 20 times faster” — I think you mean 20% faster
Any word on support outside the US?
Overall, the Kindle Klan is not digging it over in Amazon’s Kindle discussions, btw
“a curvier and more symmetrical design that (like every other mobile device hitting the market these days) borrows elements from the iPhone”
This has to win the stupidest comment of the month award.
The mention doesn’t sound stupid to me. I’m no kool-aid drinker but I can’t deny we all live in a Jonny Ive influenced world. The authors comment seems factual and worth inclusion in the article to me.
If by iPhone, he really meant the old Palm PDAs’ form factor, on which the iPhone is clearly based.
Still costs way too much. Still doesn’t work outside the USA. Still uses DRM. Still selling ephemeral products that nobody wants.
Still FAIL.
How about an eBook reader that’s useful? If I’m going to spend $370, why wouldn’t I buy an iPod Touch or a Netbook and get way more functionality?
Okaaaayyyy…
“Why wouldn’t I buy an iPod Touch or a Netbook and get way more functionality?”
Maybe ’cause you want:
* way better battery life?
* a way easier-on-your-eyes screen?
* anytime, anywhere, over-the-air access to Amazon’s 230,000 ebook library of contemporary, copyrighted work?
* a nice-sized item that you can hold in one hand, hopefully for hours?
On battery life, Amazon says 2 *weeks* on a single full charge (without wireless on). That’s rather longer than any iPod Touch or netbook battery.
On the screen, I can’t speak for everyone, but I found the Kindle 1’s screen to be great to read on…Much more pleasant than reading on my Palm Treos over the last 5 years or so.
On Amazon’s ebook store: Nobody can match it. And most, tho not all, the books I’ve looked for recently are on there.
Holding the reader in your hand…the iPod Touch is nice for this, tho I think the screen seemed to small for me, but netbook? Nope.
I ordered and received the Kindle 1 in November to try it out, knowing that the Kindle 2 was close. I decided that I was happy with the “kindle experience”, but returned it, anticipating that the improvements reported by BGR in October would just make it even better for me.
I’m waiting for the Kindle (now upgraded to Kindle 2) that I ordered last week to arrive.
“* anytime, anywhere, over-the-air access to Amazon’s 230,000 ebook library of contemporary, copyrighted work?”
Yeah… INSIDE THE USA. Amazon doesn’t believe there’s a world outside of the US.
Battery life? Big deal.
Screen? The iPod Touch screen is fine, but I wouldn’t read a book on it.
The design is clunky and the price is atrocious.
The Kindle is a failure.
You are just angry because you are not in the beautiful US of A and you are poor.
It will be interesting to see what this does for online electronic sales overall. Over the holiday season and in January, electronics purchases shifted away from traditional electronics retailers like Best Buy and online sales stayed steady. TechChannel Index has good, real-time data on what’s happening in the electronics market at:
http://www.tech...es-Channels.php
I wish they hadn’t taken away SD card support.
I guess I don’t read enough books. I was really excited about this release because the Kindle has so much potential. But as long as Amazon continues to view this as an ebook reader instead of a document/content reader (pdf, ooxml, odf, ebook, etc…) it just doesn’t have much appeal to me. It appears to be an excellent ebook reader, but if I’m going to spend $360 on it I want it to be more cross functional. And why did they ditch the SD slot? I could see making it a Micro SD slot to save space, but no slot? Maybe Kindle3 will be better.
Great for college students, provided their college text books can be downloaded as an ebook, or for anyone that reads in excess of 20 books a year.
Another difference is that, it’s apparently a female’s hand holding the Kindles 2 on the above official Kindle image, where a male’s hand held the Kindle 1. I would think there will be a female’s and male’s hands fighting for the Kindle 3 next time on the official image.
The imagery for the Kindle2 is very iPod/iPhone-esque.
It is interesting to see the way consumer electronic device (hardware) generations are treated in this case. There is no new feature that forces you to throw the old one and pay more for a new one. Kindle upgrade almost feels like software upgrade. I wonder if this business model will work. At least Amazon are the best at inventory management.
You are right, there are no compelling new features for existing users to upgrade, but this is a very immature market with plenty of new sales to be had. Which is unlike the iPod market where basically everyone who wanted one has one, so they must force you to upgrade. I don’t see a problem with Amazon’s approach for now.
That’s a valid point. I’m just thinking about the poor early adaptors:)
It appears that the Kindle 2 no longer comes with an included cover. I carry my Kindle around a lot and really can’t imagine not having a cover. On the order page, they offer a cover for 29.99, so the effective cost is actually higher for the Kindle 2.
I think I’ll wait for version3. I have kindle 1, which works great, has an sd card for extra storage and is white.
For a new color, sd card slot, and more memory, I may upgrade…but right now, I’m happy with the kindle I’ve got.
Kindle 2: now with even more Beige!!!
Kindle 2: Look mom, no touch screen, but a thousand buttons to click.
I’m not sure if its possible or even practical to have touch on a screen that does e-ink.
The newest, most expensive Sony one ($400?) has somehow grafted a touchscreen onto the eInk screen…but reviews suggest that it degrades the contrast and readability of the screen. Doesn’t seem worth it for a product designed to be read from for hours.
I am thinking the same thing. I don’t think that it should be such a hassle to use a high-tech gadget. I would prefer if it comes in Black, minimise the dirt.
The design of Kindle 2 is not as bad as Kindle 1, but it’s still bad design. They have a lot of work to do to make it look desirable. As of now, this looks like state-of-the-art device design from the year 1992.
Notice the new Kindle has “text to speech” capabilities. How tough will it be for some enterprising hack to convert that latest bestselling novel to some DRM free text-format using Dragon’s NaturallySpeaking?
I am still trying to understand what is worth upgrading from the original one?
1. Page turns are 20% faster – I have been reading on my Kindle 1 for the last year and the speed of turning pages never really bothered me. This is not a device to flip through pages for. Even when reading magazines and newspapers, the structure is such that you get the article list first with a small synopsis and then click into the full article.
2. More memory – big deal, stick an SD card in the SD card slot in the first Kindle and you’ll get the memory.
3. Longer battery life – With the wireless turned off, I get around two weeks on my Kindle 1 regardless. The wireless should really only be turned on to get updates. I leave my wireless on when taking a shower in the morning and it updates everything in less than 5 minutes. I then turn it off the rest of the time.
4. It is only .1 ounce lighter (Wow!) and as far as the controls go, that is really a matter of personal opinion and preference. I have found out that most people who say that the controls are not intuitive have not really used it. I personally like them where they are at.
Now I only hope that features such as the ability to pick up your reading on another kindle (seriously, how many people have more than one?) and what looks like a newer user interface will be updated on the Kindle 1 as well.
Oh, and I forgot to mention. If you own one and go to the Kindle 2 website, it states that Kindle 1 owners get a priority on the orders if they order a new one… No upgrade price or anything like that. If it was $200.00 and they would take my older one and donate it to schools or other charity, I would definitely do it, but I doubt that I would pay another $359 just to get a thinner device.
#1 is an interesting question… I actually did find the page-turning time from the K1 to be a bit distracting…but whether a 20% improvement is enough to not be distracting remains to be seen. I’m still looking forward to receiving the K2 I pre-ordered.
When the page turning (on the Kindle 1) gets slow after a while, you’re supposed to do a Reset, which speeds things up again (because the Reset does some kind of garbage collecting, from the background indexing? at least that was the impression I got a while ago; not sure if they still recommend this, but I still do it…).
Also, it’s slowest turning a page when the following page has an image on it that it has to render.
Does anyone know if the new kindle can render PDF’s faithfully with graphics? Before you could use the email converter however most of the layout and graphics of each pdf page got butchered.
Screen isn’t 20x faster, its up to 20% faster. Huuuge difference.
Still stunned that they’re going the wireless route. Cost or not, given the amount of storage, I’d much rather use a tethered-sync mode of operation, like all pre-iPhone iPods.
Really, just a way to guarantee that if their service ever dies, I have more than a brick in my hands. :/
You apparently do not know that you can hook it up via USB and do things the old fashioned away.
Wireless is just the preferred method b/c it avoids cables.
Wireless is an additional feature of the Kindle, not a replacement for physical connectivity.
Cool, now take out the wireless, drop the price a hundred plus, and you’re talking!
This new design almost has me opening my wallet. I can not stand touch screens, so I like the traditional keyboard and buttons and overall think they have improved the design. The price seems high for the lock down on file types and all that DRM crap. Where is the universal open device that consumers really want? Limiting consumers just so you can direct all sales through Amazon will not play out in the long run. I think all media should and will be pushed to this type of device in our efforts to be green. A device for this, a device for that, oh yeah, let me just grab my bag of proprietary devices… The iPhone almost got it. Device design and business models need to take a much broader approach. When are companies going to learn that OPEN wins the $ and consumer hearts in the long run. In my opinion Google is the only major player that is already ahead of its time in this way of thinking. They will eventually put out the ‘Killer’ device for media consumption.
Ok they STILL didn’t test it with someone with big hands. The tabs on the sides are in the MIDDLE of the damn thing which makes it impossible for someone with large hands to hold it comfortably without turning pages and doing other things by mistake.
Wake up and Smell the Coffee.
I only have to say that the Newton was ahead of its time.
Anyways, any arguing about the Kindle 2 on TC seems pretty useless to me. We’re not exactly the target demographic. The price point still seems awfully high to me though.
Am I the last guy on earth to see irony in this device’s name?
Unless it can display regular PDF files without converting, fast and in good quality, it is useless to me. I have been buying a lot of technical pdf books lately and could really use a device like this, but for some reason nobody seems to be willing or capable to produce such a reader.
I just read this somewhere else today…but apparently PDF is designed to be flow-immutable…that is, if your display isn’t the same size as that for which the pdf was encoded/designed, then the display device has to show it scaled to showing the whole page and the text there-in can’t be reflowed. The page can be zoomed into and out of, but with the text being non-reflowable, you’d have to pan the page around to read the pages…and eInk screens do not refresh quickly. So you also wouldn’t be able to change font sizes.
There is an iRex or something like that device out now with a bigger screen that’s closer, with a touchscreen, on which you can drag the page around to pan it…but the screen refreshing apparently is *really* not good enough to support good usage.
…Plus, it’s like $750 or $800.
Maybe you should wait for the Plastic Logic device (8.5″x11′ display)…maybe available next year…but the speculation on the pricing for that guy is also like $800…but I guess no one will know for sure till they actually make it available.
Biggest missing thing from this announcement was broader WhisperNet coverage.. That’s the biggest downside to the Kindle. You can’t download books in many parts of the country or in any other country.
Has anyone heard anything about the academic version that was to come out a little after this one?
Supposedly, per the TechCrunch post I read but cannot locate, the academic version was to have a larger display to accommodate textbook pages with more content.
What’s with all the Kindle hate? Technophiles are a bizarre bunch. The thing is barely out of infancy and people are hating on it like it’s Windows or something. I don’t get it.
the new kindle is really much less ugly than the first one
Its sounds like this is more than an incremental update. 7x storage – that’s huge. Looks like a great product, great job Amaxon.
I love eBooks, and I’m glad that Amazon’s position as a major entity is calling attention to eBooks. However, Amazon’s proprietary format is a HUGE problem. I don’t want to be locked into buying eBooks from only one source, and I want to be able to read my eBooks wherever I am – including on my desktop at work. I used my sister’s Kindle for a few weeks last year, and was unimpressed. There are great alternatives out there – I currently use the Cybook, which is lighter, more attractive, cheaper, and I can buy eBooks from a variety of sources (more about the Cybook). The Kindle, while frequently touted as a “huge leap forward”, really exemplifies why so many people are hesitant to try eBooks.
I don’t know that anyone has noticed this yet, but the count of books available for the Kindle is a little bloated. I found that at least 6,000 of those books are “filler” – public domain stuff posted mostly by Public Domain Books (and all available for free right now). There is nothing wrong with public domain books, but a lot of the stuff is junk – each chapter of Huck Finn is a separate book for example; the titles and author data is garbled up. Amazon may not have been involved in it, or even be aware of it, but it is interesting to note.
I see this an overall great improvement, I never even considered buying the first, but the 2nd one looks modern enough. I see these as the future of reading in a huge way. BFR
WHY are Kindles popular? It’s like an oversized original Gameboy, complete with the yellow-green screen. Read: outdated and ugly. Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with Gameboys. But original Gameboys are now RETRO. You know, like Ataris? It’s 2009, not 1989. (year GB came out)
The New Amazon Kindle 2 Has Arrived
Price: $359.00 & this item ships for FREE
hxxp://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00154JDAI?tag=tophit-20
The New Amazon Kindle 2 Has Arrived
Price: $359.00 & this item ships for FREE
http://www.amaz...I?tag=tophit-20
I’m waiting for a device capable of reading 8.5 x11 PDF without conversion. Sooner or later it has to be created. Maybe Plastic Logic Reader will work as I’m expecting. Let’s hope.
Wow the kindle 2 looks awesome! Cant wait to get my hands on it.
I am a full time student and always looking for cheaper ways to purchases books for the up and coming semsters. I would like to know if the Kindle 2 works for college textbooks, if they are accessible or not?
Looks great. Cant wait.
I can’t wait until these sorts of devices are created with flexible/rollable screens and cases. It’s going to make it so much more convenient to carry around.
I’ve bought a Kindle 2 for only $299.00 at Revolution Store few weeks ago and I’m really impressed with it. It’s wonderful. I love it!