Kindle Update Adds PDF Reader, Extends Battery Life

By Geoff Duncan Published November 25, 2009

Amazon Kindle 2 on Book — Image used with permission by copyright holder

Amazon has launched an update to its 6-inch Kindle reader, adding a new battery that the company claims offers up to 85 percent more use, along with software updates that add a native PDF reader and screen rotation to the device. Customers who already have Kindle 2 devices can get the software updates sent to them wirelessly (or grab the firmware themselves and update via USB).

Amazon claims the new battery capacity is the result of six months of firmware engineering effort: the new Kindle 2 should stay functional for up to seven days on a single charge—and that’s with leaving wireless service enables. In addition, the new battery better handles period of inactivity: the battery should stay at its previous level for up to two weeks when turned off. However, customers who purchased the original Kindle who want the new battery life will be forced to buy a new unit: the batteries in the Kindle are not user-replaceable.

Recommended Videos

The 6-inch Kindle also now sports a native PDF reader, and a new capability for users to transfer PDFs to to their Kindles via email. Users can just send them to their Kindle email address; optionally, if they’ve like the PDFs converted to native Kindle format, they can just put “convert” in the subject line of the message. Native PDF support will be available for “some” earlier versions of the Kindle.

Kindle owners with the update will also be able to manually rotate between portrait and landscape modes, with the page-turning buttons operating the same way regardless of orientation.

The battery life improvements give Amazon’s base-model Kindle reader a point against competing readers from the likes of Barnes & Noble and Sony, which boasted significantly more battery life than the Kindle. However, Amazon may already have an advantage for the end-of-year holiday shopping season: Barnes & Noble says it is sold out of its Nook reader, and Sony is already saying it may not be able to deliver enough units of its Readers to retailers by the holidays.

Former Contributor

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

Topics

Emerging Tech

A new startup wants to fix the military’s working-dog shortage with cloning and gene editing

Promising pitch, plenty of unanswered questions about the dogs.

a new startup wants to fix the militarys working dog shortage with cloning and gene editing warhound featured image

Military working dogs charge into places the rest of us would flee. So, I understand why anyone would want to breed tougher, healthier dogs for the job.

Warhound, a new startup from Colossal Biosciences co-founder Ben Lamm and Anduril co-founder Palmer Luckey, has stepped out of stealth with $200 million to clone and gene-edit working dogs for American troops, police departments, and emergency services (via TechCrunch).

Emerging Tech

AI can describe a picture, but it still struggles to understand blind users

A University of Maryland study finds that Be My AI often buries useful answers in lengthy descriptions, leaving blind users to work harder to get the information they need.

Blind Man using walking stick

AI can describe a picture, identify objects, and answer questions about what a camera sees. But when a blind user needs a quick answer, getting an entire spoken essay about the scene isn't exactly helpful. Researchers at the University of Maryland (UMD) have found that AI-powered visual assistance can leave blind users doing too much work to get the information they actually need.

The study, titled Say It My Way: Exploring Control in Conversational Visual Question Answering with Blind Users, examined how people interact with Be My AI, an AI-powered feature of the Be My Eyes app. The researchers found that users often received lengthy descriptions that didn't adequately address their immediate goals, forcing them to ask follow-up questions or find ways to steer the AI towards a more useful answer.

Emerging Tech

Etsy cracks down on AI slop listings. Everyone else needs to take note.

Now every platform must decide what counts as handmade.

Etsy featured image

Platforms tend to shrug off AI clutter until it threatens what they sell. For Etsy, that thing is trust in the maker.

To protect that, Etsy has banned AI-generated how-to guides and listings made entirely by bots. Most sellers must show at least one unretouched photo of the item (via Etsy Seller Handbook).