Amazon Kindle Touch Launches In UK

The Amazon Kindle Touch has launched today in the UK, a full six months after it was announced in the US.

Kindle Touch and Kindle Touch 3G are now available for pre-order from Amazon from today.

The new Kindle Touch has built-in Wi-Fi, two small audio speakers and carries up to 3,000 books. While it won't play audiobooks, it will play mp3s and read out text.

At first glance, the Kindle Touch is just as light as the 2011 Kindle model.

Typing and page turning are much easier on the touch screen than on the previous model, and a click button at the base of the frame makes navigation simple. You touch rather than swipe to turn pages, and a QWERTY touch keyboard makes searching for and buying books much easier.

A new "x-ray" feature that displays the key locations and characters of a book will help readers keep track of complex plots. This feature will also pull in additional content from Wikipedia on character names, locations or historical events.

As per previous models, the Kindle is ready to go straight out of the box - one reason it leads the e-reader market.

Amazon would not be drawn on details regarding the release in the UK of the Kindle Fire, with Jorrit Van der Meulen, Vice President, Kindle, Amazon EU Sàrl telling Huffington Post at the launch that "we have nothing to say on that." He would also not discuss how many Kindles and e-books have sold, saying they don't do so "for competitive reasons".

They were willing to say that since the introduction of the Kindle sales of both physical books and e-books have grown.

Kindle Touch is available for £109 and Kindle Touch 3G with free 3G wireless for £169. As with all Kindle 3G models, Amazon swallows the cost of downloading your new e-books, newspapers and magazines wherever you are in the world.