The Amazon Kindle has been a revelation in the e-reading world, and although Apple’s market-leading iPad tablet offers plenty of reasons for the bookworm to make the purchase, Amazon’s offering has proved to be the biggest hit when it comes to catching up with the latest and greatest novels.
The online retailer, not content with resting on its laurels, as been pretty active in bringing forth new devices such as the Kindle Fire slate, and has just announced its brand-new Kindle Paperwhite – the perfect companion for any avid book reader.
It’s called the Paperwhite because, well, it has a paper-white display – another implementation to make the book-reading experience as authentic as it can be on an electronic device. The first few generations of the Kindle have prided themselves on offering a genuine reading experience as opposed to a backlit, glare-laden eyesore, and it seems the Kindle Paperwhite takes things to a whole new level.
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos spoke of the work that went into producing the beautiful new paper-like display, stating: "When we set out to build this paperwhite display, it didn’t exist. So we had to build it." As well as being very, very white, it’s also of higher resolution – 212ppi in fact – so it’s a great deal sharper and clearer than any other Kindle we’ve seen up until this point.
There’s a wide selection of fonts, and one standout feature arrives in the form of a chapter time counter, which allows you to see how much time you have left to read in a specific chapter, or the book as a whole.
Bezos admitted the device takes "some cues from the Kindle Fire," such as the ability to swipe through the content of the Kindle in cover mode, offering a smoother, more streamlined experience.
New features mean precious little without solid battery retention, and the new Amazon Kindle will keep you going for eight weeks – even with the light on – which is pretty staggering.
At just 9.1mm thin, it’s nice and svelte, and as Bezos notes, "it’s thinner than a magazine, lighter than a paperback." And to top it off, the Paperwhite has a ginormous battery life of up to 8 weeks, that’s enough to keep you reading on the go. The whole package is also complimented with free storage in Amazon Cloud, so you can save your books and content for later viewing and consuming on other Kindle devices, which is a huge plus point.
You can begin preordering as of today for $119 for the Wi-Fi only model and $179 for the Wi-Fi + 3G model, and the device will begin shipping on October 1.
Apart from the new Kindle Paperwhite, Amazon also took the opportunity to give the original Kindle a slight bump in specs, making it 15% faster than it’s older sibling. The new Kindle retails for $69 and ship on September 14.
You can follow us on Twitter, add us to your circle on Google+ or like our Facebook page to keep yourself updated on all the latest from Microsoft, Google, Apple and the web.
