Amazon Kindle 1

November 19, 2007

Amazon released the Kindle, its first e-reader, on November 19, 2007, for $399. It sold out in 5.5 hours. The device remained out of stock for five months until late April 2008.

The device featured a six-inch (diagonal) four-level grayscale E Ink display, with 250 MB of internal storage, which can hold approximately 200 non-illustrated titles. It also has a speaker and a headphone jack for listening to audio files. It has expandable storage via an SD card slot. Content was available from Amazon via the Sprint Corporation US-wide EVDO 3G data network, via a dedicated connection protocol which Amazon called Whispernet. Amazon did not sell the first-generation Kindle outside of the US.