Amazon reveals new Kindle Touch e-readers
$79, $99, $149
Speaking at an event in New York - which is being liveblogged by Engadget - Amazon's Jeff Bezos has just revealed three new Kindle models, two of them radically different from its existing range of e-readers.
Kindle Touch has a button-less touchscreen tablet design, and it's smaller than current Kindle models. It lets you turn pages by tapping on segments of the screen, which Amazon calls the “easy reach” system.
Among the new software features is X-Ray, which lets you look up background information concerning whatever's on the page. For example, during the demonstration Jeff showed the Kindle Touch going to the Wikipedia page for the Treaty of Versailles because it featured on a particular page of the novel Remains of the Day.
It'll have an “extra long battery life”, the most advanced e-ink screen, and it'll cost $99. Another model, the Kindle Touch 3G, will be exactly the same but with free 3G in 100 countries for an extra $50.
The third new Kindle model announced in the first part of the presentation is simply the $79 Kindle, which includes buttons but no keyboard, doesn't have a touchscreen, weighs under six ounces, and is 18 per cent smaller than the Kindle 3. It costs $79.
