Amazon announced a new generation of the Kindle on July 28, 2010. While Amazon does not officially add numbers to the end of each Kindle denoting its generation, most reviewers, customers and press companies refer to this updated Kindle as the "Kindle 3".
The Kindle 3 is available in two versions. One of these, the Kindle Wi-Fi, is initially priced at US$139 / GB£109, and connects to the Internet exclusively via public or private Wi-Fi networks. The other version, considered a replacement to the Kindle 2, is priced at US$189 / GB£149 and includes both 3G and Wi-Fi connectivity. The new Kindle with 3G is available in two colors: classic white and graphite. Both models use the new E-ink "Pearl" display, which Amazon claims is 50% better in contrast - a claim that is backed up by early user reports.
Among other hardware changes Kindle 3 has a larger 1750 mAh lithium polymer battery, AnyDATA DTP-600W 3G GSM modem and Atheros AR6102G 802.11bg WiFi chip.
The third generation Kindle is 0.5 inches shorter and 0.5 inches narrower than the Kindle 2. It supports additional fonts and international Unicode characters. An experimental browser based on the popular WebKit platform is included, as well as text-to-speech menu navigation. Internal memory is expanded to 4 GB. The battery can allegedly last for up to one month of reading with the wireless radios turned off.
Pre-orders for the new Kindle began concurrent with the announcement of the...
