It’s been nearly five months since we scooped Amazon’s Kindle 2 and earlier this week, after what seemed like an eternity for anxious e-book fans, Amazon finally began shipping its new reader. We unboxed it for you this past Tuesday but you know we couldn’t leave it at that — it’s full-on review time! Leading up to the Kindle 2 we’ve been through a Sony PRS-505, an Amazon Kindle 1 and an Irex Iliad so we had high hopes for Amazon’s new Jesus-reader. Is it up to snuff? Did it fall flat on its slim, sexy, 3G-connected face? Grab a cup of coffee and a snack pack, then hit the jump to find out.

To kick things off, let’s start with the guts. The Kindle 2 packs a 532 MHz ARM-11 processor, a 3.7 V 1530 mAh non-removable lithium polymer battery, a Sprint compatible EV-DO antenna and 2 GB of internal storage. The choice to abandon the external SD card slot and the removable battery of the Kindle 1 are a source of contention amongst current Kindle owners and rightfully so. Yes, the internal memory of the Kindle 2 can hold close to 1,500 books and the battery does promise longer life but people paying $360 for a reader don’t want to be limited — especially when the first generation Kindle didn’t have such limitations. You can’t carry around your whole library if your collection exceeds 2GB and the device is only useful for the life of the battery (unless you want to fork over $60 to Amazon to replace it).

Continue reading the Kindle 2 Review.