Amazon kindle

Amazon announced three new kindles today, two of which use E Ink displays. The new Kindle Touch e-readers feature 6" Pearl E Ink displays and an infra-red touch sensor.The $79 non-touch Kindle 2011 is a streamlined version of the older Kindle 3 - with only 5 physical buttons (beside the next/prev ones, anyway). The Kindle Fire is a $199 7" IPS-LCD tablet/e-reader.

The Kindle Touch will launch on November 21st, but you can order it today. The Wi-Fi version costs $99 with screensaver ads and $139 without ads. The 3G version costs $149 (ads) or $189 (ads-free). The Kindle 2011 is shipping now: $79 for the ad-supported version and $109 for the non-ads variant. The Fire will launch on November 15th for only $199 - you can pre-order it now.

We're proud to announce our first Kindle game software: Nonograms. Nonograms (also known as Griddlers or Paint By Numbers) are simple yet challenging Japanese logic puzzle games in which your goal is to uncover the hidden black and white picture. Download this exciting game now for $2.99! If you like SuDoKu puzzles, you'll surely love Nonograms.

The puzzles contain a grid with number clues on the sides that help to reveal the hidden picture. The numbers measure how many blocks of black square there are in any given row and column, and the size of these blocks.

Our sister-site E-reader-Info has just posted a review of the new kindle 3 - the one with the new E Ink Pearl display...

Read the full review here.

Geek.com has posted an interesting comparison: comparing the iPad's IPS-LCD (or Super-LCD) to the Kindle's E Ink up close. There are two photos. One at 26x magnification, in which you can already see the 'dots' in the LCD (the right image):

The second image is at 400x magnification:

As you can see, the E Ink display is way better up close - it's not just a series of dots. So obviously the LCD has a lot of advantages (color, fast response time, bright), but for reading, nothing beats an EPD...

Engadget has posted a short review of the Kindle DX Graphite. They say that this is a good evolutionary step for the Kindle DX, and the new display has a great contrast ratio, and a better refresh rate when compared to the previous version.

The Graphite Kindle DX is now shipping for $379.

There are two versions: Wi-Fi only and WiFi/3G. Both versions will ship on August 27th, and can be pre-ordered now. The Wi-Fi only will cost $139, and will come in Graphite. The 3G version will cost $189, and you can choose between white and Graphite.

E Ink has announced their next-gen display technology called Pearl, to be released in July 2010. This new display has about 50% improved contrast ratio compared to the current Vizplex displays. The Pearl has 16 levels of gray, improved power consumption (and of course they do not require power when images are not changed).

The Pearl is the display used in Amazon's new Graphite Kindle DX, which will ship on July 2010, and cost $379.