No, Amazon didn’t hustle to magically switch in a new battery overnight. They just tweaked how they measure battery life to more closely match the way Barnes & Noble does. As CNET discovered in Amazon’s promotional copy:
A single charge lasts up to two months with wireless off based upon a half-hour of daily reading time. If you read for one hour a day, you will get battery life of up to one month. Keep wireless always on and it lasts for up to 10 days. Battery life will vary based on wireless usage, such as shopping the Kindle Store, Web browsing, and downloading content. In low-coverage areas or in EDGE/GPRS-only coverage, wireless usage will consume battery power more quickly.
And if you use it for 15 minutes a day you’ll get three months, etc.
It’s understandable to want to present yourself in the best light, sure, but also maybe a little silly. Because if you haven’t bothered charging your ebook reader in 4-8 weeks, you’re probably not using it at all. [CNET]
TSH
Thursday, May 26, 2011 at 10:57 AM“if you haven’t bothered charging your ebook reader in 4-8 weeks, you’re probably not using it at all.”
That’s a bit harsh, IMHO. My Kindle spends most of its time in my bag and I have on it a huge collection of classic fiction anthologies from the likes of Dickens, Tolstoy, Austin, Homer, Dostoyevsky etc (currently reading a Vonnegut anthology), heaps of other classics from Gulliver’s Travels to Frankenstein and a few educational books.
I have no reason whatsoever to load more content onto it and my phone is better at music and web browsing. I often (granted, not always) spend my lunchtime reading, and it hasn’t gone near my PC or a power outlet in a couple of months. Could use a charge in a week or two though, the way things are going.
:–D
Steve
Thursday, May 26, 2011 at 7:48 PMThis is hilarious. They didn’t put in a new battery or anything, they just changed the the number from 1 to 2 on their site.
They’re taking a leaf out of Apple’s book. If the signal on the phone is low, why bother fixing infrastructure or designing a better antenna when you can simply adjust the number of bars seen on the phone? Of course it doesn’t matter that the network is just as shit as it was the day before the update, as long as it shows 4 bars rather than 2, people won’t care.