More Power, PDF for the Kindle

By  |  Tuesday, November 24, 2009 at 10:29 am

There’s almost no such thing as “enough” in the world of tech. But Amazon’s Kindle e-reader, which can run for two weeks on a charge, surely has enough battery life. But the two-week figure only applies if you shut off the gizmo’s 3G data connection. Leave it on, and you reduce the list to four days.

Until now: Amazon says that it’s managed to improve wireless-on life to seven days on a charge, which surely counts as enough. It’s also added native support for documents in PDF format. (Until now, you’ve had to convert PDFs to the Kindle’s native format to read them.)

The best news: Existing owners of the current Kindle model will get both of these enhancements via an over-the-air software update. Owners of “some” earlier Kindles will get the PDF support, but not the extended battery life.

It may not be entirely coincidental that Amazon is making this announcement shortly before the arrival of Barnes & Noble’s Nook. That imposing Kindle competitor has more features overall than Amazon’s e-reader has had, including PDF support. I don’t see a figure for wireless-on battery life in B&N’s specs list, but the Nook goes for ten days if you turn the wireless off. Which is still a heck of a lot longer than most electronic devices, but the device’s color touchscreen presumably sucks enough power to reduce the life compared to that of the Kindle.

Both the Kindle and the Nook still have some features that the other one doesn’t. The Kindle, for instance, can read books out loud and has a crude Web browser; the Nook has Wi-Fi as well as 3G and lets you lend books to Nook-owning pals. I’m not going to come to any conclusions about whether there’s a clear winner until the Nook shows up, but it’s going to be fun to watch the two book megamerchants duke it out.

 
4 Comments


Read more: ,

2 Comments For This Post

  1. Andy Says:

    It’s about time they added PDF support. Glad to see better battery life too. Another price drop and I’m buying a Kindle.

  2. Bart Says:

    Amazon’s page about the 2.3 update says the batterly improvements are only for the new Global Edition of the Kindle (i.e. the Sprint-powered one), which means a majority of Kindle users (AT&T-powered Kindle 2, and Kindle 1) won’t get the improvements. If by “latest model” you mean the one that’s only been out for a little over a month, I would sure hope those people get the battery improvements, otherwise this update would help nobody. But other than that your article makes it sounds like Amazon just did something good for a lot of people.

2 Trackbacks For This Post

  1. Kindles with HSPA 3G Gain Longer Run-Time, All Kindles Get Native PDF Support Says:

    […] books and the battery looks to have at least two-thirds of a charge remaining as of yesterday. But Technologizer says that Amazon today announced that the Kindle’s battery life is boosted by a whopping […]

  2. More Power, PDF for the Kindle – Technologizer | Bargain Ebook Readers Says:

    […] Post By Google News Click Here For The Entire Article November 24th, 2009 | Category: […]