Thursday, September 16, 2010

Kindle 3 First Impressions

Marco Arment:

The screen has been significantly improved, and there are subtle layout differences…Note how the removal of the top bar and elimination of the margin below the progress indicator has added space for three more lines of text per page at this font size. There’s a new font chooser as well: on most content, you can select between “regular”, “condensed”, and “sans serif”…I still prefer the “regular”. There’s also a line-height option, but the default (pictured) is the largest, and the two smaller settings decrease legibility too much for my taste.

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Marco's best observation:

And I bet a lot of Kindle users would love a smaller version without the QWERTY keyboard that would just require book purchases to be done elsewhere, or with a slow on-screen keyboard navigated by the 5-way controller.

That's pretty much exactly what I've been waiting for to buy my first Kindle, and I haven't seen anyone mention it before. I want a dedicated reader device, not a reader/shopper device.

(The only difference I have with Marco is that I want the current form factor minus the keyboard, with a longer screen using the real estate.)

Agreed. A Mac or iPhone is probably better for the shopping, anyway.

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