With Kindle 3 officially announced and already shipping to first preorder customers, let's see what kind of improvements the new Kindle brings to the table… See our Kindle 3 review here.

I will group the improvements and differences in few groups, according to how much important they are in my eyes. Feel free to comment below!

CRITICAL (Finally Amazon Kindle does this, its mandatory)

1. Native PDF support (Kindle now opens PDFs without the need for software conversion to internal format, as required by Kindle 2. Also zooming, creating notes, highlighting and dictionary lookups are possible even on PDF text. You can also change brightness of rendered text/graphics – options are lightest, light, normal, darker and darkest – great for some poorly scanned books in PDF)

2. Wi-Fi support (Kindle 2 did not have that, but competition does. This allowed Amazon to release cheaper $139 Kindle 3 with WiFi only as no need for expensive 3G dataplans with roaming for international users).

3. Improved battery performance (up to a month with radios off – and without using LED light in new leather cover)

4. New and improved Webkit based web browser! This is sooooo cool folks, that I cant really describe it. It is no ipad, but it will provide you basic function, and it will work on all pages, and will keep you on the web! I use it rarely, but I used it abroad for checking stuff (since i have 3G version), and with roaming data included this is a WIN. Even if amazon decides to only support web browsing while on WiFi, its still worth it! It simply works, and its fast! You can zoom in, javascript is working, can even connect to facebook…

5. Voice guide, reads menus and text descriptions. Great for blind people, which is logical, now as Amazon also offers audio books! So Kindle enables people with disabilities to use it which I think is great!

WELCOME (Good to have, come handy every now and then)

1. Better contrast (Amazon cites up to 50% blacker blacks. This is a feature on all E-INK Pearls displays, including with new  (graphite) Kindle DX. Also Amazon also added/changes fonts (new are Caecilia, Condensed and Sans-serif)so they better stand out against background, with inclusion of waveform tuning and font-hinting technologies which are Amazon proprietary solutions.

2. 20% higher speed when turning pages (although, turning pages in large PDFs vary a lot! On 20MB PDF with 80 pages turning pages is really fast, but on 15 MB PDF with 200 pages – all pages/text saved as graphics it is still painfully slow).

3. Twice the memory capacity - (4GB) you can now store up to 3500 books – but more importantly you can load lost of music and PDFs to your Kindle, and still use everything!

4. More ergonomic design – well buttons are placed more together, and the screen really dominates on the device. Also rubberized back provides extra grip (if you use it without cover).

5. Web page can be downloaded for later reading, and converted into text-only article (and when online can be switched back to web-mode)

BAGGAGE (Just checkpoints for feature shoppers – no real value in real life usage)

1. Kindle 3 is thinner and lighter… Which is true – new kindle is noticeably smaller,and few grams lighter, but now it is also more difficult to hold it in hands (one hand particularly, especially if you do not want to hold it on screen), and NOBODY will tell you that that really neat leather case which we all ordered, weights another 200 grams (almost as much as Kindle 3 at 230 grams or 8.7 ounces – which makes the difference between Kindle 2 and 3 of 20g neglect able).

2. Quieter buttons for turning page  (yes they are not clicking any more, but you still have to press them lightly and in the middle if you want them silent… But the 4-way joystick is still low, and in my opinion worse than it was in Kindle 2. Especially for all non-native-english speakers who like to use the inbuilt dictionary, and have their partners sleeping next to them in bed at night)… So – we want even quieter buttons, Amazon!

3. Amazon added audible section to Amazon store for Kindle, so you can now download audio books.

4. Delivery of personal files/documents/audio books via Wi-Fi which is free.

5. Our Brit friends probably find it useful that on Kindle 3 you can choose between inbuilt English-English Oxford dictionary US/UK version. Also regional concern – Kindle 3 supports different languages/character sets, so besides Latin it now supports Chinese, Cyrillic, Korean, Japaese, Greek

6. Kindle 3 sets time to local time automatically. Also when downloading books, you can now see the progress bar.

See the detailed comparison spreadsheet for details: