Improvements in the Kindle 2 design bring a thinner footprint, a metal back plate and stereo speakers. As I mentioned last October, when the surfaced, the design cues bring back memories of the first Apple iPods. As usual, the information is purely speculative but the forum reads that Kindle 2 will be available on February 24 for $359.

Kindle 2 features rounded corners, a black and white screen (apparently the same size as the ), a 3.5mm headphone jack with a sliding sleep button at the top and a unified QWERTY keyboard under the screen. Smaller navigation buttons are placed on both the left and right sides of Kindle 2. A joystick now replaces the original Kindle scroll wheel.

Amazon's new Kindle will use the same EV-DO wireless technology for over-the-air downloads as the original. Storage wise, Kindle 2 is said to come with a 2GB on-board memory. Form the leaked pictures, no SD card slot can be seen but my guess is that there will be a way to expand Kindle's memory - maybe a slot.