The Kindle 2 is here folks — it should look pretty familiar at this point! Feast your eyes on the photos. We’re building out with more photos and video, so stay tuned. We played for the unit for the briefest of moments, but it really does feel great in hand. The brushed metal back is great, the device is incredibly light and comfortable to hold, and the keyboard is fairly usable. We’re not convinced the five-way joystick is the best they possible could’ve worked into this space — a d-pad seems much more logical — but it’s responsive and comfortable enough to twiddle with for what it is. Here’s some thoughts:

• The five-way rocker is definitely a step up in terms of navigation — it makes getting around pages way easier by allowing you to skip through individual words, and you can actually navigate simple web pages the way you’re used to.
• The new dictionary pop up (it brings up your definition on the bottom of the screen as you’re scrolling through text) is a huge win. It was a pain before, but looking up words is now super easy. Unfortunately — according to Ross Rubin — footnotes are still handled in the slow, laborious way they’ve always been.

More of the Kindle 2 Review here.

NEW YORK–Were there an anthology of gadget launch announcements, the unveiling of Amazon’s Kindle 2 e-book reader would have one of the more anticlimactic storylines.

It started out like any other big press conference, with a line of reporters and photographers streaming out the door onto the chilly sidewalk outside the historic Morgan Library & Museum.

The Kindle 2’s arrival had been preceded by the usual blog blitz of leaked photos, rumors, and breathless wish lists. (A color screen! Better PDF support! International versions of the Kindle store!) Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos took the stage, Steve Jobs-style, with a slide show recap of the original Kindle’s success before making the big debut.

More of the Kindle 2 Review here.

The unveiling of a hotly anticipated new product. An exuberant chief executive thumbing through slides. A surprise appearance by an A-list guest.

Amazon’s (AMZN) Feb. 9 introduction of the Kindle 2 had all the makings of a product launch by consumer electronics wunderkind Apple (AAPL). “That was parallel to the performances at iPod launches,” says Ross Rubin, consumer technology analyst with NPD Group.

That’s where the comparisons with Apple should end. As much as some might try to draw parallels between Amazon’s approach to books and Apple’s take on music, analysts are clear that the latest generation of Amazon’s sleek, white little electronic book reader is no iPod for the book world.

More of the Kindle 2 Review here.

Now that we’ve seen, unveiled by Jeff Bezos today in New York, I can’t help but conclude that the more powerful machine provides only a slim additional reader benefit. Here’s why:

There are improvements that make the Kindle 2 marginally better for readers, like faster page turning, smaller better page-turn buttons, longer battery life and the ability to charge via USB. None of the rest of the tweaks affect the actual business of reading directly or indirectly, and even these upgrades probably won’t turn Kindle 1 owners an envious shade of green:

• 20% faster page turning: It nice because flipping ahead several E-Ink pages can be annoying—but it’s not what’s needed to make a real difference. You still can’t leaf through a Kindle book like a real book, and that won’t happen until the page refresh is 100 times (maybe 1000 times) as fast.

More of the Kindle 2 Review here.

The Kindle was out of stock for the last two holiday selling seasons as Amazon underestimated demand, Bezos says. “I’m very hopeful that we’ll be able to stay in stock with Kindle 2,” he said Monday at the New York launch, while offering no guarantees.

Kindle 2 will cost $359, same as its predecessor. More than 230,000 books are available in the Kindle Store. Best sellers typically cost $9.99. Newspapers, magazines and more than 1,200 blogs are also available.

More of the Kindle 2 Review here.

As part of Amazon’s unveiling of Kindle 2, the online retailer announced a new novella from Stephen King titled Ur will be available exclusively on the device.  I caught up briefly with King at the Morgan Library in New York City.

Question: As a writer how important is this new delivery system?

King: The delivery mechanism to my mind is secondary for me as a writer. That isn’t necessarily true for people in the business end of it.  But I did this once before with a story called Riding the Bullet and I never had so many guys in suits come up to me and ask me questions. But they didn’t want to know about the story, they didn’t want to know about the process, they wanted to know about the delivery system, but to me that’s secondary.

More of the Kindle 2 Review here.

Amazon’s (AMZN) new Kindle 2 e-book reader, unveiled today in New York, is more attractive than its predecessor: It’s thinner, has a sleek metal back, and nicer buttons. And it has some improved features: More storage capacity, better page-turning functions, and the screen displays more shades of gray.

But Amazon did not do much today to make the Kindle significantly more attractive to mainstream buyers: It’s still $360 and it’s still only really good for one thing — reading books.

More of the Kindle 2 Review here.

Looks like those Kindle 2 photos we published back in October were spot on. Additional official-looking photos of the Kindle 2 have emerged and the new e-reader from Amazon looks sweet! If the pencil comparison is accurate, then the new Kindle appears to shed much of its width, coming in as thin as the Sony PRS-505 reader, and little bit longer than both the original Kindle and the Sony Reader. As we reported earlier, the Kindle 2 also appears to have a metal back with built-in speakers. Start putting those pennies aside as the Kindle 2 is expected to hit Amazon on the 24th of February for $359, the same price as the current Kindle. No apparent price increase, yay! This is still all unconfirmed but the information seems to jive with previous rumors and the source of the leak, MobileRead, is well-known in the e-book world. We will all get the skinny on this reader and its features on Monday, until then enjoy the photos after the jump.

More of the Kindle 2 Review here.

I had the chance to do a brief hands-on with the Kindle 2 after its introduction today; in contrast to last time around, review copies were not available to the press. I’ve gone on record with a list of complaints about the first generation version, and suggested that there may have been little Amazon could do, given its reliance on E-Ink for that hardware. It appears that E-Ink has come through for them in a big way, and the Kindle 2 is a far better device as a result…

Read more here.