Any new preorders of the Kindle 3 will now ship only on Sept 17th – thanks to Joe S. for the update. That’s a one week delay from the earlier Sept 10th date and translates to a 21 day delay overall.
It seems that the Kindle 3 has started selling faster because earlier the dates would extend only a few days. We’ve gone from Aug 27th to Sept 4th to 8th to Sept 10th and now this huge jump to the 17th.
It wouldn’t be a surprise to see more jumps - once people start seeing what the eInk Pearl screen looks like there’s going to be a huge rush.
Kindle vs Sony 650 – more details
Engadget has managed to find some shots of posters for the new Sony Readers. Lots of juicy details -
- The touch screen is no longer over the eInk screen which would be a big win.
- Sony is claiming an amazing and crisp paper-like appearance. That certainly screams eInk Pearl – However, the posters aren’t clear enough to confirm it.
- There are multiple language dictionaries – 2 English dictionaries plus 10 Language translation dictionaries. This is a killer feature.
- Sony mentions a new cache capability that allows for faster page turns.
- 2 GB storage capacity.
- Intelligent Zoom for scanned documents, PDFs, and newspaper clippings.
- 10,000 page turns on a single charge. Much prefer the ‘lasts x weeks’ type of description of battery life. Apparently 10,000 page turns is 33% more battery life than the Sony 600.
- The design and the name are the same (apart from Sony 350 getting a Sony 600 type design with touchscreen and 5 buttons below the screen) - The 650 will still be called the Reader Touch Edition and the 350 will be called the Reader Pocket Edition.
Love how Engadget puts up the poster and then decides it’s not worth writing about the new features – since they’re on the poster.
Is that it, Sony?
There better be a few more posters because apart from the touchscreen being below the eInk and the language dictionaries there isn’t really anything on there that’s very exciting. The translation dictionaries are a good feature for some sets of users – However, where are the other killer features?
Sony has to do better than Intelligent Zoom, 2GB memory, faster page turns, and a 33% better battery life. The Kindle 3 came in with close to 20 improvements out of which 5 to 10 were killer new features. Sony Reader might have just 3 to 4 killer additions.
If we do a Kindle 3 vs Sony 650 comparison it seems Touch, support for Library Books, and Language Translation Dictionaries seem to be the only significant advantages Sony 650 has over the Kindle.
Filed under: availability Tagged: | kindle delay, kindle vs sony
Multiple language dictionaries is something Amazon could add easily through an upgrade. I hope so.
Touchsreen without an extra layer? That would be great, taking notes with an stylus is great. But page turns using touch screen requires holding the device using two-hands, no? One for holding the device and one for doing the gesture (or at least requires having a large thumb finger). Kindle 3 allows one-hand holding and page-turning.
John, with a little adjustment you can do 1 hand page turning on Sony Touch Edition. It’s a bit awkward the first few times and then it feels pretty natural.
Touch is a MAJOR device-defining feature, if it works well and doesn’t impact screen quality.
Regarding the ship date, I ordered mine on July 29th with the stated ship date as Aug. 27, is that still good or are you saying that it’s been changed and pushed to September or is that just for the most recent orders???? I’m a newbie and I want it now!
Your date is fine. This is for new orders made today.
And what would be the significant advantages of Kindle over Sony 650?
Well, unfortunately we’ll have to wait for a precise list.
At the moment they seem to be – much better eBook store (even factoring in reading Nook books on Sony 650), WhisperNet and free 3G and free 3G for US owners in 100+ countries, WebKit browser (don’t know what Sony will have), CJK and Cyrillic Font support (not sure if Sony 650 will have these, they might), Accessibility, 3 Fonts, physical keyboard (since some people really like this), better usability (unless the new Sony UI is very good), lots of apps for various platforms, perhaps a better screen since Amazon has done tweaks to the eInk.
The thing is Amazon has done a ton of improvements – so they have 4GB memory and up to a month battery life and 3G and WiFi and a $139 Kindle WiFi.