Kindle update brings native PDF support

 

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By Stuart Turton

Posted on 25 Nov 2009 at 12:04

Amazon has brought native PDF support and a significant increase in battery life to the Kindle, courtesy of a major firmware update.

In the past, anybody hoping to read PDFs on the eBook reader needed to email them to a Kindle email address that's supplied when you register the device.

Amazon then converted them into its proprietary AZW format, with documents either emailed back to you and loaded manually using a USB cable, or sent wirelessly to the Kindle at a cost of 99 cents per megabyte.

However, Amazon has now removed the need to go through this clumsy procedure by bringing native support for PDF documents to the Kindle 2, including international models, and the Kindle DX which features a 9.7in screen.

While this would normally be a cause for celebration, the Kindle's PDF reader doesn't support annotations, text-to-speech, panning or zooming. The latter is of particular concern given that many PDFs tend to feature tiny text, making them unreadable without the ability to zoom in.

One feature of the update that's sure to perk up Kindle owners is the increased battery life. Amazon claims the Kindle will now last for seven days with wireless turned on, compared with four days previously.

"Battery power management for portable wireless devices is a complex technical area, and the battery life improvement announced today is the result of a six-month firmware improvement and testing program," Amazon claims.

The update will be applied automatically over the Kindle's wireless connection.

The improvements come a day after Amazon announced it was working on an update allowing Kindle owners to arrange their own libraries on the device.