How Amazon designed the Kindle 2

Amazon decided against giving the Kindle 2 a color display when designing its next generation replacement. This was due to the fact that it would make the device bulkier and pricier, as well as give it a shorter battery life. Explaining the rationale, Amazon Vice President Ian Freed said, "The most important thing for the Kindle to do is to disappear," referring to the attempt by the Kindle team to increase the unobtrusive usability of the device.

In the candid interview with Ina Fried of CNET News, Freed would not say when people will be able to read Kindle ebooks on non-Kindle devices, though he did confirm that one "won't need a Kindle device to read Kindle content." Indeed, this was what the new Whisper Sync feature was all about, allowing people to read the same ebook on Kindles and smartphones alike.

On the text-to-speech capabilities of the Kindle 2, Freed dismissed claims that it would compete against the audio content produced trained narrators, despite the uproar by book publishers. He noted that only a fraction of books ever come out in audio form; for the rest of us, the text-to-speech feature is something that is useful for those who are in the middle of a cliffhanger but "have to get in the car or cook dinner."

From the interview, it appears that Amazon is clear about the role of content even as it positions itself to be the clearing house of ebooks. DRMed ebooks or not, Amazon wants to bring ebooks to the masses.

For more information about the story:
- check out the article at ZDNet

Related Articles:
Amazon Kindle news from FierceMobileIT