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Comment by adolph | Hacker News Reader

I don't know about the necessity of physical page turn buttons. I've had a paperwhite and now a scribe and the touch is fine. An advantage of touch is that it supports sideways orientation, which I use on the paperwhite to increase the page width.

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If you haven't had a kindle with buttons you have no basis of comparison. They're lovely.

I used to have one of the older ones with buttons. now I have a recent Paperwhite and don't really miss them. I just tap on the screen edge and it works fine. I can understand the appeal of buttons and am glad that you have a reader with them but it's not something that motivates me.

I’m sure the buttons are of the finest sort.

That doesn’t invalidate a subjective eval that touch is fine for this context and an objective conjecture that physical buttons would lose orientation if orientation were changed 90°.

I don't see why you think physical buttons would lose orientation. My kindle had forward and back buttons on both sides that worked fine in either orientation, and on devices that only have one button per side the one on the bottom is next and the one on top is previous.

I now understand your point about the physical button orientation remaining the same but the human-computer model shifting from a book-like right-left pagination to a computer-like scroll pagination. That is interesting to consider. Thank you.

I believe the default touch zones on new ereaders are in fact still shaped like interlocking L's, with the right side and most of the bottom counting as Next and the left side and most of the top counting as Previous.

The oasis has a touchscreen, but touch turning can also be disabled to prevent accidental page turns. The oasis page turn buttons also rotate depending on the orientation, whether that be right side up, upside down or horizontal, which allows the page turn buttons to be operated one-handed with either the right or left hand.

I went from an Oasis to the Scribe and I do not regret it but I accidentally turn the pages a lot more without buttons which is slightly annoying.

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