Exclusive Kindle 3 comparison photos, kindle 3 video review

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by thinkpadx

Look at the top of the screen on those pictures.
Where's the battery meter, whispernet info and the title of the book? Have they removed this info on the K3?

It's optional - you can choose not to display the status line and progress bar and get two more lines of text on the page as a result. You'll notice that the K3 is showing more text than the K2 is.

[thinkpad]

Nice feature, couldn't find it on the K2 is it new for the K3?

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by HarryT

It's optional - you can choose not to display the status line and progress bar and get two more lines of text on the page as a result. You'll notice that the K3 is showing more text than the K2 is.

I hope this option comes to the next K2 firmware.
I *like* bar-less reading.

[HarryT]

I think it is new, yes.

[iReaderReview]

There are actually 4 changes

1) The page you open the book on has the bar. As soon as you move to another page the bar disappears - It's not exactly optional.

2) The progress bar at the bottom of the screen has been moved to the very bottom. On Kindle 2 there was a blank strip below it.

3) Separation between progress bar and text has been reduced.

4) Line spacing is less now.

Those combine to create quite a difference. On size 4 the Kindle 3 screen now holds 4 extra lines of text than the Kindle 2 screen does. 3 of those are due to having the bar gone and progress bar moved lower and closer to text. 1 is due to line spacing being less.
This is for 'low' line spacing option.

[AdrianM]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Here's another side-by-side comparison of the K2 and K3 displaying the same book. The K3 has a clearly whiter background and blacker text than does the K2, as well as being significantly physically smaller.

If you mask out the white and graphite frames there is no difference, at least when viewing on my laptop which of course adds another level of possible inaccuracy. Those different frame colours change our subjective impression of the grey screen and of course, next to a dark frame the grey will look whiter than when compared to a bright white frame.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by AdrianM

If you mask out the white and graphite frames there is no difference, at least when viewing on my laptop which of course adds another level of possible inaccuracy.

Yes, I agree with you; the frame colour does subjectively make the background look whiter, but there's actually very little in it. The contrast improvement comes from the significantly blacker blacks; they are grey on the K2, but genuinely black on the K3.