Amazon launches new Kindle Paperwhite

Ah a new Kindle Paperwhite.

The Kindle is without doubt the ebook market's leading e-reader. So what can Amazon do to press its advantage further, and develop the line? Target tablets and improve the specs.

With the proliferation of mobile devices, more and more of us are tempted to read on iOS or Android-powered tablets. Amazon knows this. But while tablets are really 'jacks of all', the Kindle's aim is to merely 'master of one'.

The key advantage of the Kindle line is glare-free reading. This isn't new, but Amazon has upped the screen resolution in the new model for even easier reading.

As well, the new Kindle Paperwhite work with Amazon's 'Bookerly' font, and a newly conjured typesetting engine to help address everything from character spacing and hyphenation to reading speed and eye strain.

It's a small improvement then - but easier reading can't be a bad thing. If you're in the market for a new Kindle (and can wait until June 30th) the product page can be found here.

Kindle for Samsung offers free ebooks

Do you own a Samsung Galaxy smartphone or tablet? If you do, Samsung and Amazon's new 'Kindle for Samsung' service offers you free ebooks. The service, announced today, comes in the shape of a custom-built app which you can have installed on any Galaxy device running Android version 4.0 or later (if you need to check your Android version, go into the Settings app, and look for the 'About Tablet/Phone' option).

If your device is up to scratch, the Kindle for Samsung app is available for install via Samsung Apps (not Google Play), and offers users a choice of one free title per month from a selection of four. That's not all it offers; there are around 500,000 ebooks, newspapers and magazines from the Kindle store too.

The service includes amazon's WhisperSync functionality, alongside the extra features 'Worry Free Archive' (a backup of your titles to the cloud), and Time to Read (which estimates how long you will take to finish your chapter).

Both Amazon and Samsung seem rather delighted about the partnership, and if we're honest free books - digital or otherwise - are always an interesting proposition.

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Here are some quotes to make it all official:

“We’re delighted to be able to deepen our long-standing relationship with Amazon and offer Kindle for Samsung as the perfect app for reading on a smart device. With this service we demonstrate our commitment to creating and broadening key content partnerships that deliver rich and personalised experiences for our customers.”

~ Lee Epting, VP of Samsung Media Solution Centre Europe.

" “With Kindle for Samsung, people around the world will have instant access to the best digital bookstore and reading experience, including more than half a million titles that are only available from the Kindle Store, and innovative features like Whispersync, Time to Read and much more.”

~ Jorrit Van der Meulen, Vice President of EU Kindle.

Amazon now backs up Kindle documents

Amazon has tweaked its Amazon Cloud Drive service to automatically back up all documents users send to their Kindles using the "send to Kindle feature". Available on desktop and mobile devices, send to Kindle allows users to send documents, texts and ebooks to their devices - useful for reading materials not part of your Amazon ebook library. The change has reinforced that functionality in a rather intuitive manner.

Now Amazon will backup any documents you send to Kindle devices to your personal Cloud Drive folder for safe-keeping. It also means there's some changes to the 'Manage Your Kindle' section of Amazon accounts, and an Amazon email details those:

"You can use Manage Your Kindle to see a list of your documents, re-deliver them to Kindle devices and free reading apps, delete them, or turn off auto-saving of documents to the cloud".

The feature to back up documents can be disabled in the Your Kindle Account section of Manage Your Kindle - under the Personal Document Settings heading. You might want to leave it on though; the 5GB of free storage for document is added to the existing 5GB all Amazon account holders are given.

10GB of free storage is rather handy, and even 5GB will take a while to use up with documents unless you're a particularly heavy or regular 'sender'!