Archive for the ‘next gen kindle’ tag
Amazon Developing Other New Gadgets Besides Kindles? no comments
The NYT Bits blog has been reading the Lab 126 job listing tea leaves again and suspects that Amazon is developing more than just future generations of Kindle ereaders.
It does make sense that Amazon would want to develop more products that would help to sell its digital content to consumers.
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Kindle 3 Announced 2 comments
Apparently the 6-inch Kindle being out of stock 
for the last few days was in preparation for the introduction of a new Kindle, which Amazon has just announced. The new version is a “21 percent smaller and 15 percent lighter design, with 50 percent better contrast, 20 percent faster page turns, up to one month of battery life, double the storage, and more–only $189, and still with free 3G wireless.” Wi-Fi is also built in, and there will additionally be a Wi-Fi only Kindle for a lower price of $139, which is $10 lower than the price of the Wi-Fi only nook ereader.
The smaller size is achieved by slimming down the bezel and rearranging the buttons. The page turning buttons are thinner as well.
As expected, the new 6-inch Kindle will make use of the new Pearl e-ink display, just like the new DX graphite. As for the faster speed, it apparently does not come from the faster processors we’ve been hearing about over the last six months or so, but sounds more like it is the result of fine tuning and optimization:
Kindle’s all-new, high-contrast electronic ink display is further optimized with Amazon’s proprietary waveform and font technology to make pages turn faster and fonts sharper. Waveform is a series of electronic pulses that move black and white electronic ink particles to achieve a final gray level for an image or text. Amazon tuned the new Kindle’s waveform and controller mechanism to make page turning 20 percent faster. In addition, this waveform tuning combined with new hand-built, custom fonts and font-hinting make words and letters more crisp, clear, and natural-looking. Font hints are instructions, written as code, that control points on a font character’s line and improve legibility at small font sizes where few pixels are available. Hinting is a mix of aesthetic judgments and complicated technical strategies. Amazon designed its proprietary font-hinting to optimize specifically for the special characteristics of electronic ink.
Some other feature upgrades:
- More built-in storage: new model will store up to 3,500 books.
- Quieter page turning buttons. The older model makes a small clicking sound when you flip pages.
- New Web browser: The new Kindle uses a WebKit-based browser, which is faster and easier to navigate. The new browser also has an “article mode” feature, which condenses Web pages into the main textual content for easier reading.
- Better Accessibility: New Text-to-Speech (TTS) enabled menus enable navigation of menus without having to read menu options. All menu options, content listings on the home screen and item descriptions are TTS enabled.
The new Kindle 3G + Wi-Fi comes in both graphite or white, while the Wi-Fi only model is available in graphite only. I do like the graphite color better than the white myself – it adds to the perceived contrast. The Wi-Fi only model also weighs slightly less – 8.5 ounces vs 8.7 ounces for the Kindle 3G + Wi-Fi (and 10.2 ounces for the older model).
The new lighted leather cover for 
the Kindle 3 sounds kind of neato. It has a built-in retractable light that draws power from the Kindle’s battery via gold plated conductive hinges that also hold the Kindle 3 securely in the cover. The new lighted cover
Well, there is nothing really groundbreaking with this release, but the improvements are somewhat more substantive than the Kindle DX graphite’s improvements over its previous model. I really wish we could have gotten more durable plastic-based displays but, after the iPad’s release, pricing has become the primary focus. I’m hoping that the color Kindles, when they arrive, will have flexible screens.
The newest members of the Kindle family of ereaders will be shipping on August 27, 2010. Amazon is taking pre-orders
UPDATE: Amazon has put up a copy of the Kindle 3 User Guide – I’ve posted a link to it on my User Guides and Manuals page.
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Thinner, Faster Kindle Coming in August? no comments
In an article yesterday Bloomberg quoted unidentified sources as saying that the next iteration of the Kindle ereader will be out in August and will be thinner, have better contrast and will have faster page turns.
That’s all? This does not seem like enough to justify a new hardware release. Jeff Bezos did try to throw some cold water on the idea that a color Kindle would be forthcoming in the near future, but according to Bloomberg’s sources the next Kindle won’t even have a touchscreen. This in spite of the fact that Amazon recently assimilated a touchscreen startup. No mention either of a shatter-resistant flexible screen – PVI has said that its plastic-based e-ink screens should be in production by that time.
It seems unlikely to me that Amazon will introduce new ereader hardware that is only incrementally better than the present generation.
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PVI Reports Strong Growth in First Quarter 2010 no comments
Prime View International (via Digitimes) has reported that its profits for the first quarter of 2010 were up 169% for the quarter. Most of the increase is attributed to PVI’s E-ink and Hydis subsidiaries. From the Digitimes article:
PVI will introduce color, flexible, multi-touch e-paper solutions this year, Liu (PVI chairman) noted, adding that mass production of these new solutions has already begun.
Shipments are expected to peak in August-September, Liu noted, saying that revenues in the second half of the year will have more significant growth compared to the first half of 2010.
This is interesting – could we see Kindle 3 in August – September? PVI’s flexible solution should be ready for the market then, but I think it will be too early for their color e-ink screens from what we have heard so far.
Here are a couple of new videos of prototype e-ink screens from PVI.
