Kindle in slow-burn mode 'til 2009

Long, thin and late to the holiday parties: Amazon's plan for the Kindle 2 is apparently to emulate a fashion model and hope for the best.

According to Amazon's site, there are no Kindles to be had for the holidays -- sorry, gift-givers. (And please stop asking why there's an ad running on the front page of the Amazon.com site for a product no one can buy.)

But rumors that low inventories reflected the imminent advent of the next version of the Kindle appear to be sorely mistaken. If the device truly was slated to ship in October, as reported by TechCrunch, it didn't and it won't until after the holidays.

Based solely on early reports, the next Kindle is believed to have lost its SD card slot, though it retains its EV-DO wireless connectivity. Leaked preliminary images indicate that the device is longer and perhaps a touch wider than the previous iteration, and users familiar with the first version may find the placement of the page-turn buttons less annoying, and the keyboard has lost the gap that currently runs down the middle.

But since you're already waiting, perhaps you'd like to just keep waiting for Kindle's planned "student edition," which will sport a larger screen suitable for textbooks. Or maybe you remember that the last big rush of e-book hardware also coincided with a recession, and you're curious to see if another candidate will come along.

Plastic Logic in September demonstrated a super-slim reader -- an 8.5"x11" screen, but slimmer than a full pad of paper, and touchscreen rather than key-driven. The screen is also slightly flexible, but it's not quite the roll-up OLED ideal just yet. And if you crave an even larger screen, Europeans already have access to the iRex Digital reader, which handles A4- and letter-sized pages.

Amazon was unable to respond to BetaNews' Kindle 2 questions by press time.