Amazon Releases Thinner and Lighter Kindle & Double The Memory!
We talk a lot about TV here are Geektown, but for those of you into the written word, Amazon today introduced an all-new version of their hugely popular reading device, the Kindle. It’s thinner, lighter, and comes with twice the memory as the previous generation for the same price point – £59.99. They’ve also added in Built-in Bluetooth audio for accessibility, which is a great additional feature for visually impaired users, allowing them to use their screen reader with the unit, without needing an adapter.
The new Kindle is available in black and white colour options, and features a more rounded design, making it easy and comfortable to hold in one hand at any angle for extended reading sessions. Unlike reflective tablet and smartphone screens, the high contrast touchscreen display on Kindle eliminates glare in any setting, even in direct sunlight.
Apparently recent studies by the Harvard Health Publication have shown that evening exposure to blue light from backlit screens like tablets and smartphones can suppress the body’s production of melatonin, a naturally occurring hormone that helps the body fall asleep. Because the Kindle display emits no light, you can read anytime without losing sleep.
Amazon also say, like all Kindle e-readers, the all-new Kindle has a battery life that lasts for weeks and not hours.
New Features:
Kindle comes with Amazon’s newest reading features, including:
- Export Notes—It’s now easy to export notes and highlights from a book to your e-mail, so you can always have them on-hand for reference. Receive your notes both as an easily printable PDF that’s ready to bring to your book club, and as a simple file you can open in your favourite spreadsheet app. This feature will be available as part of a free, over-the-air software update in the coming weeks.
- Built-in Bluetooth audio for accessibility – The first Kindle with built-in Bluetooth audio support, Kindle makes it possible for visually impaired users to use the VoiceView screen reader on Kindle to read the content of the screen—including reading books and other Kindle content—without the need for an adaptor. This is enabled through a new out-of-box experience specifically for visually-impaired customers that allows them to pair their Kindle with Bluetooth headphones or a speaker.
- Personalised Home Screen—An updated interface and navigation makes it even easier to discover your next favourite book, manage Wish Lists, and see recommendations from friends via Goodreads. To learn more, visit amazon.co.uk/kindleupdate.
- New Fonts—Fonts like Bookerly, Ember, and OpenDyslexic provide more choice for customers on top of the world class fonts already available on Kindle.
Plus all the original Kindle features:
The new Kindle includes all of the features that have made the Kindle family the most popular e-readers in the world for eight years running:
- Weeks of battery life—Battery life is measured in weeks, not hours.
- Whispersync—Saves and synchronises your last page read, bookmarks, and annotations across all of your devices and Kindle apps, so you can always pick up where you left off.
- Worry-free archive—Automatically backs up your Kindle books in the cloud, so you never need to worry about losing your books—re-download your books wirelessly anytime for free.
- Goodreads—Kindle is integrated with the world’s largest site for readers and book recommendations, with over 50 million members, 1.5 billion books added, and 50 million book reviews.
- X-Ray—Explore the “Bones of the Book”—see all of the passages across a book that mention relevant ideas, fictional characters, historical figures, places, or topics of interest.
- Word Wise—Available on many popular English language titles, Word Wise makes it easier to enjoy and quickly understand more challenging books. Short and simple definitions. automatically appear above difficult words, so you can keep reading with fewer interruptions.
- Family Library—With Kindle and Kindle reading apps, you can access not only your own books, but also books from the Amazon account of a spouse or partner.
- Kindle for Kids—Gives parents a simple, engaging way to encourage kids to spend more time reading. Hand-select books for your kids to read, and achievement badges are earned when they hit reading milestones.
- Time to Read—Tells you how much time it will take to finish a chapter or a book based on your personalised reading speed.
- Vocabulary Builder—Compiles words you look up in the dictionary into an easy-to-access list. Use these lists to quiz yourself with flashcards and instantly see words in context.
- Share your favourite passages—Share book recommendations, highlighted sections, and meaningful quotes with friends via Facebook and Twitter.
- Smart Lookup—Integrates a full dictionary definition with other reference information via X-Ray and Wikipedia.
- Custom-Built Typesetting Engine—Word and character spacing, with hyphenation, justification, ligatures, and kerning lays out the pages just as the author intended.
Kindle e-readers come with instant access to the Kindle Store, which includes:
- Massive selection—Millions of books, newspapers and magazines, including the latest best sellers, Kindle Singles, and more.
- Kindle exclusives—Over 1,000,000 books are exclusive to the Kindle Store.
- Lowest book prices—Over 2.4 million titles are £3.99 or less.
- Kindle Unlimited—Enjoy unlimited reading of over 1,000,000 books and unlimited listening to a selection of thousands of audiobooks for just £7.99 a month.
- Kindle First—Access new Kindle books a month in advance of their official release date. Customers can choose one of the featured books each month for £0.99, and Prime members can make their selection for free—yet another benefit of Prime membership.
The all-new Kindle is £59.99 and is available for pre-order around the world and will start shipping in the coming weeks. Pre-order now at www.amazon.co.uk/kindle. The all-new Kindle will also be available from retailers including Argos, Currys PC World, John Lewis and Tesco.
