Amazon's Kindle 2: From the Inside Out

ByABC News
February 24, 2009, 10:40 PM

— -- Call them crazy, but let nobody doubt iFixit's devotion to their disassembling. The online, well, fix-it store has gotten its hands on one of Amazon's Kindle 2 devices, much like all the other enthusiasts and reviewers as of late. Only, here's the difference -- instead of using their Kindle 2 to catch up on their Twilight reading, they've decided to rip it apart to show you all the electronic glitz and glamour of this popular e-book reader.

Did they find anything neat? Well, a few things. First, there's no protective covering over the Kindle 2's display--that's just pure, unadulterated E-Ink. What you see and touch on the outside of the device is the actual panel. More than that, the Kindle 2 apparently used a SIM card at some point. Or there's at least some thought toward slapping a SIM card into the device at some point, so suggests an empty outline on the circuit board where said card might go:

Some other fun facts include:

  • Twenty Phillips screws lock the Kindle's plastic paneling to its main circuit board. That's a lot of unscrewing for this .36 inch-thin device
  • The device's 3.7-volt lithium polymer battery makes up around 10 percent of the total weight of the 10.2-ounce Kindle 2.
  • The Kindle 2 sports a 532 MHz processor as its brain, along with a 2GB combined moviNAND Flash controller and memory module.