Amazon's Jeff Bezos Announces Kindle DX

by Jordan Yerman | May 6, 2009 at 09:42 am

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Amazon's CEO Jeff Bezos announced the upcoming release of the Kindle DX, which will sport a larger screen than those of its predecessors.

The e-reader has won the hearts of many, and also raised a few eyebrows, becoming the flashpoint in the electronic-vs.-dead tree reading debate.

While some love the Kindle's (and ohter e-readers') light weight and high storage capacity, others point out that books never run out of batteries, require no network connection, can shim up wonky tables, and can recover from accidental encounters with liquid with only the aid of a hair dryer.

Portability is the main selling point, though, so it struck me as odd that the new version of the Kindle will be larger... it will sport a 2.5x bigger screen with a few new features (see below), but still: in my opinion, the larger it gets, the fewer advantages it holds over a book.

Native PDF support through built-in reader
• Automatic landscape/portrait text rotation
• Line length adjustments (determine the width of text on the screen)

The new device will cost about US$500, and will be available for purchase (by people other than me) this summer.

In the spirit of preserving a winning formula, the Kindle DX is a carbon copy of the Kindle 2 device, simply with an 8-inch by 11-inch screen format screen. The screen size itself measures 9.7 inches diagonally.