In my last post I mentioned that I’d bought a Kindle recently and love it – I thought I’d follow up with a quick review of why I’m so pleased about buying it.

The best thing about the Kindle is the electronic ink system that it uses. After a few minutes of reading it for the first time you forget that you’re actually looking at a computer screen rather than a real book. If you’ve never seen it before, the e-ink screen means that the Kindle isn’t backlit. That reduces the glare from the screen and makes it like reading a normal book on paper.

The other great feature of the Kindle is the Amazon Kindle store. You can access it at any time, buy a book and have it ready to read on your Kindle in less than a minute. The downside to this is that it makes it very easy to get carried away and buy loads of books.

When you combine these things with daily newspapers, cheaper prices (although not by as much as you’d expect) and free 3G connection around the world the Kindle really is good value for money. I’m glad I chose it over getting a tablet – it’s built specifically for reading and it shows. I’d definitely recommend getting the official case with light too, although it’s quite expensive compared to other options.

An interesting new piece of tech that’s going to be released soon is a flexible smart phone. Apparently it is powerful enough to do things normal smart phones do, such as playing music and reading eBooks (as well as all the phone basics that you’d expect) but you can also get it to do different things by folding it up. I’m not sure when it’s actually going to be released, but the guy who made it seems to think that all phones will be like that in a few years.

I can see some of the positives – phones are getting bigger again as people want bigger screens, so it would be great to have one that was a bit smaller and flexible enough to store easily. Also, the technology used in the phone is the same as that found in the Kindle eBook reader. I’ve bought a Kindle recently and love it (have a look at my next post when I get around to writing it) so I’m pleased that the same ink system would e used.

It’s only a prototype at the moment, but hopefully in a few years the technology will be available on the market. I don’t know how consumers are going to react – after all there’s something satisfying about getting a new phone that looks great – but it’s a very interesting technology nonetheless.