Kindle gets an upgrade – just in time for the holidays

With the holiday shopping season about to “officially” kick off – and strong competition looming from both Sony and Barnes & Noble, Amazon has announced some drastic improvements for the Kindle.

The online retailer says it has found a way to increase battery life by 85 percent. This is for both new and existing models (a firmware update is available now). With this, you’ll be able to leave your Kindle on for seven full days (with WiFi activated) before you’ll need to recharge.

All Kindles will also now be able to read Adobe PDF files natively (as opposed to the conversion process they currently undergo). And users will be able to manually control screen rotation – a small, but very welcome change. Full details about the upgrade are available from Amazon.

The Kindle has a big leadership position in the eReader space, but it will face its biggest competition in the coming months. The category is expected to continue growing at a fast pace next year as prices start to fall. Barring something unforeseen, analysts say, eReaders will be the ‘must have’ gift of holiday 2010.