X

Amazon Kindle Touch

Amazon has finally announced that the Kindle Touch 3G will ship to Australia.

Michelle Starr Science editor
Michelle Starr is CNET's science editor, and she hopes to get you as enthralled with the wonders of the universe as she is. When she's not daydreaming about flying through space, she's daydreaming about bats.
See full bio
Michelle Starr
2 min read

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.