Amazon Kindle 3 Keyboard Ebook Reader In The UK – My Initial Thoughts

This blog post covers my initial thoughts of the Amazon Kindle 3 Keyboard eBook reader.

2021 update: This is a very old blog post and I all these years later I still use the same Kindle! I’m a huge fan of the Kindle 3 keyboard and whilst I now also own newer models, I still like this old device, but after many years of use, the battery is understandably struggling and I recharge more often.

Introduction

My parents brought my girlfriend and I a Kindle 3G as a gift. No anniversary, birthday or Christmas, just them being generous as always.

The thoughts (review)

It’s thin and light, not I must admit as light as I was expecting. Which is pretty ridiculous on my part, seeing the amount of tech this device sports. The screen quality and their e-ink technology is wunderbar. So let’s get down to the surprising bit, nothing to do with the awesomeness which is the ebook reading. They’ve done a deal with Vodafone (in the UK), so that all the glorious ebooks can be downloaded from the Amazon Kindle store via 3G mobile technology, without the need to hook up via a cable or wifi. It is touches like that help propel a product and service beyond their competition. Yes I know hence the ‘3G’ being in the name, but currently a free connection in the UK! That rocks. Now that wasn’t the surprising bit, though pretty great if you ask me, what is surprising is what follows.

Then I discovered their ‘experimental’ browsing, which means I can surf the internet for free via the Kindle 3G in the UK. A nifty feature is that once you have moved away from a home page of a blog, over to a specific article you can use the article mode feature, which makes the web page content very readable for the sites I’ve visited. Pretty darn awesome! Now this isn’t a paid for feature and they could pull it at any moment, it is just a nice to have while they offer the service. Don’t go and buy it for that alone, as they might turn it off, who knows?

Another nice touch was the fact it already came partially charged, which meant I could start devouring books. As I’ve been collecting their free books for a while, both the always free and limited time offers, there were over two hundred books waiting for me.

Now this is my very brief review of the product and service. I’ve had a crazy busy week, I’ve not had a chance to try out the other features, so I guess that is another post. What I will say is the product feels solidly built. The qwerty keyboard is nicely done and the monster length usb cable they supplied is appreciated.

So using a Kindle 3G in the UK isn’t just about glorious ebook reading using their e-ink technology, there is more to it. Obviously this post is only the tip of the ice-berg so to speak, so perhaps I will write a more detailed post, once I’ve spent more time with it.

Cheers Mum & Dad. 🙂