Amazon’s New, Slimmer Kindle 2 Due Feb. 24

By Geoff Duncan February 9, 2009

Amazon

Amazon has taken the wraps off the Kindle 2, a new version of its popular ebook reader. The Kindle 2 aims to improve on the original Oprah-beloved Kindle reader by offering a sharper screen, a sharper 6-inch e-Ink display, substantially expanded storage, a new slim design, and an experimental “read to me” feature that uses text-to-speech technology so users can listen to books, magazines, newspapers, and other content using the Kindle.

“Kindle 2 is everything customers tell us they love about the original Kindle, only thinner, faster, crisper, with longer battery life, and capable of holding hundreds more books,” said Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, in a statement.

The Kindle 2 features a 6-inch 800 by 600-pixel e-Ink display that supports 16 shades of grey, rather than the four shades on the screen of the original Kindle—Amazon also says the new display is about 20 percent faster than the original Kindle’s screen. The new Kindle is also slimmer, coming in at just over a third of an inch thick, with new buttons that enable users to easily turn pages regardless of how they’re holding the unit. The Kindle 2 also sports a five-way controller for easier navigation and note-taking, and a more-portable power charger for taking Kindle on the road.

Under the hood, the Kindle 2 comes with 2 GB of memory (which Amazon says should be enough for up to 1,500 books) and a battery life 25 percent longer than the original Kindle. And, of course, it still supports Amazon’s WhisperNet wireless capability, using Sprint’s 3G network to pull books into the Kindle throughout the United States with no monthly fees or subscription plans. The Kindle 2 also automatically syncs up with the original Kindle and (Amazon hints) future Kindle devices, so users can easily transition between units. Amazon says the Kindle 2 will be able to sync with mobile phones in the future.

And where does Kindle content come from? Amazon’s Kindle Store, which currently offers over 230,000 books, an increase from the 90,000 available when the original Kindle launched in 2008. The Kindle Store also offers many current magazines and newspapers, along with more than 1,200 blogs.

Amazon will start shipping the Kindle 2 on February 24 at a price of $359; pre-ordering is available as of today.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics

Emerging Tech

Former Digital Trends Contributor

Geoff Duncan writes, programs, edits, plays music, and delights in making software misbehave. He's probably the only member…

News

Digital Trends’ Tech For Change CES 2023 Awards

Digital Trends CES 2023 Tech For Change Award Winners Feature

CES is more than just a neon-drenched show-and-tell session for the world’s biggest tech manufacturers. More and more, it’s also a place where companies showcase innovations that could truly make the world a better place — and at CES 2023, this type of tech was on full display. We saw everything from accessibility-minded PS5 controllers to pedal-powered smart desks. But of all the amazing innovations on display this year, these three impressed us the most:

Samsung's Relumino Mode
Across the globe, roughly 300 million people suffer from moderate to severe vision loss, and generally speaking, most TVs don’t take that into account. So in an effort to make television more accessible and enjoyable for those millions of people suffering from impaired vision, Samsung is adding a new picture mode to many of its new TVs.
[CES 2023] Relumino Mode: Innovation for every need | Samsung
Relumino Mode, as it’s called, works by adding a bunch of different visual filters to the picture simultaneously. Outlines of people and objects on screen are highlighted, the contrast and brightness of the overall picture are cranked up, and extra sharpness is applied to everything. The resulting video would likely look strange to people with normal vision, but for folks with low vision, it should look clearer and closer to "normal" than it otherwise would.
Excitingly, since Relumino Mode is ultimately just a clever software trick, this technology could theoretically be pushed out via a software update and installed on millions of existing Samsung TVs -- not just new and recently purchased ones.

Entertainment

AI turned Breaking Bad into an anime — and it’s terrifying

Split image of Breaking Bad anime characters.

These days, it seems like there's nothing AI programs can't do. Thanks to advancements in artificial intelligence, deepfakes have done digital "face-offs" with Hollywood celebrities in films and TV shows, VFX artists can de-age actors almost instantly, and ChatGPT has learned how to write big-budget screenplays in the blink of an eye. Pretty soon, AI will probably decide who wins at the Oscars.

Within the past year, AI has also been used to generate beautiful works of art in seconds, creating a viral new trend and causing a boon for fan artists everywhere. TikTok user @cyborgism recently broke the internet by posting a clip featuring many AI-generated pictures of Breaking Bad. The theme here is that the characters are depicted as anime characters straight out of the 1980s, and the result is concerning to say the least. Depending on your viewpoint, Breaking Bad AI (my unofficial name for it) shows how technology can either threaten the integrity of original works of art or nurture artistic expression.
What if AI created Breaking Bad as a 1980s anime?
Playing over Metro Boomin's rap remix of the famous "I am the one who knocks" monologue, the video features images of the cast that range from shockingly realistic to full-on exaggerated. The clip currently has over 65,000 likes on TikTok alone, and many other users have shared their thoughts on the art. One user wrote, "Regardless of the repercussions on the entertainment industry, I can't wait for AI to be advanced enough to animate the whole show like this."

Mobile

4 simple pieces of tech that helped me run my first marathon

Garmin Forerunner 955 Solar displaying pace information.

The fitness world is littered with opportunities to buy tech aimed at enhancing your physical performance. No matter your sport of choice or personal goals, there's a deep rabbit hole you can go down. It'll cost plenty of money, but the gains can be marginal -- and can honestly just be a distraction from what you should actually be focused on. Running is certainly susceptible to this.

A few months ago, I ran my first-ever marathon. It was an incredible accomplishment I had no idea I'd ever be able to reach, and it's now going to be the first of many I run in my lifetime. And despite my deep-rooted history in tech, and the endless opportunities for being baited into gearing myself up with every last product to help me get through the marathon, I went with a rather simple approach.