The Kindle Touch 3G has finally been released to Australians, six months after the device launched in the US, Amazon announced today. The Touch 3G is now available for pre-order from Amazon.
The new Kindle Touch Wi-Fi and Kindle Touch 3G are finally catching up to the likes of the Kobo Touch and the Sony Readers, boasting a multi-touchscreen.
While the Wi-Fi version is boasting a US$99 price point, that's for the ad-supported version, which won't be available in Australia. The Kindles without special offers will be available for US$139 and US$159 for the Wi-Fi and 3G, respectively, meaning that they still won't be undercutting the US$129 price of the Kobo Touch.
Other specs include:
- 172x120x10.1mm (HWD) dimensions, compared to the Kindle 3's 190x122x8.5mm
- 213g for the Wi-Fi version and 220g for 3G, compared to 241g and 247g, respectively
- 4GB of internal memory (up to 3000 books)
- Free cloud storage for all Amazon purchases
- A full charge (up to four hours) will, according to Amazon, last up to two months
- Audio support for Audible and MP3 files, with a 3.5mm headphone jack and rear speakers
- File types supported are AZW, TXT, PDF, MOBI, PRC, HTML, DOC, DOCX, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP
- Text to speech on selected titles
- Amazon's new "X-Ray" feature: "With a single tap, readers can see all the passages across a book that mention ideas, fictional characters, historical figures, places or topics that interest them, as well as more detailed descriptions from Wikipedia and Shelfari, Amazon's community-powered encyclopedia for book lovers"
- Built-in Wi-Fi or 3G, with no additional data costs
- Built-in dictionary and Wikipedia search
- Bookmarking, annotations, highlighting and passage sharing
- Built-in access to the Kindle store.
This is an impressive feature set, and, with the current Kindle availability through Woolworths, Big W and Dick Smith, will put the Kindle far ahead of any local competition, although with Sony's excellent hardware and the Kobo's user-friendliness and price point, it won't blow them out of the water just yet.
The Kindle Touch Wi-Fi has been available in Australia since September.
Stay tuned for our full review.