Amazon has cornered the eBook reader market with its Kindle devices. At an event held today, Amazon has announced improved Kindles, and one of them is the Kindle Paperwhite. This new Kindle is a traditional eBook reader, in the sense that it does not really aim to give the user more than eBook reading. In other words, it’s not a tablet with a host of features and apps, it’s the basic Kindle, only improved.
The biggest improvement of the Kindle Paperwhite is its frontlight feature. This lets users read even at night with a surface lighting technology, hence, the name Paperwhite. Amazon says its patented light guide technology keeps the lighting even across the screen but it does not consume too much battery, so you can leave it on all the time. The battery can actually last for eight weeks between charges.
The Kindle Paperwhite is still touch enabled like the Kindle Touch, but while the latter hasnphysical control buttons, the Kindle Paperwhite is all touch. The display of the Kindle Papewhite has been improved over the Kindle Touch. It now has a sharper (212 ppi) and higher-contrast display. The interface of the Kindle Paperwhite is a bit similar to the Kindle Fire’s. It now features a “cover mode” homescreen that lets users swipe through their library.
The Kindle Paperwhite is already available for order in the U.S. and will start shipping on October 1. For users, in the Philippines we may have to wait long before this becomes officially available. Of course there’s nothing that can stop us from ordering through friends and relatives in the US, or we can wait for enterprising people to sell it online.
The Wi-Fi model is priced at only $119 while the 3G-enabled model retails for $179. These are ad-supported models so if you want the ads to go away, you need to shell out an extra $20 for each model.
httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpgHMuUB8nU
