The New Kindle Conflagration

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Last Thursday, Amazon rolled out their new product line.  With an eye toward the coming holidays, Amazon must be hoping to capture some of the excitement surrounding the forthcoming announcement from Apple believed to be the unveiling of their new iPhone.  Amazon, however, is doing things a little differently.  Instead of focusing strictly on what's forthcoming, they've taken the opportunity to showcase technologies new and old.

The Kindle Fire has a new look, a bit bigger and a bit more powerful; but where Amazon really succeeds is its continuing dedication to pre-existing technologies, improving on the traditional Kindle with a back-light, higher contrast screen, and a pixel count over sixty percent greater than existing technologies.  This is a big deal for two reasons. 

The Kindle still maintains the allure of a read-only device.  That is, instead of handling multiple functions poorly, it focuses on a single product and delivers remarkably.  Amazon has always realized that e-readers are about ease of reading.  While Barnes and Noble, Sony and others jumped on the bandwagon with various degrees of success, Amazon legitimately holds the market firmly in its grasp.  And by reducing pricepoints on pre-existing technology, they're able to capitalize on a key market demographic that isn't terribly concerned about snazzy graphics and downloadable apps.  They just want the book.

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But the improvements they've made sound pretty good, including an LED backlight that's apparently been in the works for over four years.  A definite selling-point here, I'm excited to see how it handles as far as eye-strain and reading in the dark are concerned.  The flickering of most tablet screens has always bothered me, and strained my eyes, so that I've foregone extended reading on computer screens.  This seems revolutionary.

More remarkable, though, is managing to maintain the coveted under $200 price-point for their Kindle Fires, despite improvements in screen size and operating speeds.  For a little more, you get a little more, but the Fire's primary use is still mainly apps, videos and music and for under $200 you're getting a pretty good deal.  Including a new HD screen is icing on the cake, and may be what Amazon needs to steal a big chunk of the pie from Apple.

The one feature that doesn't really make sense to me is the Time to Read function, which times your page turns to gauge how long a particular chapter or book takes to read.  I can imagine someone generating tables from these statistics to demonstrate the readability of a particular book, or gauge how much of a fit it is with your style or reading based on your own reading rate.  At best, I'm leery of this feature.  I think it's invasive beyond necessity and seems patronizing.  At worst, I think it's more data floating around the ether about you that doesn't need to be there.

Despite that, I'm excited for Amazon's new releases, and I'm all the more excited to try out the new Kindle Fire for myself.  What do you think?  Let me know in the comments below.