The hardware buttons for the page turn are the essential feature i love about my Kindle Keyboard (3rd Gen).
The integrated lighting is nice, but not really the kind of innovation that i wish the market leader in e-books would be capable of and nothing i'd buy a new one for.
I'd instantly buy another Kindle if they had a color e-ink version like the Jetbook color, or that prototype that e-ink showed on the 2011 IFA.
This makes me worry about Amazon's future in the ereader space. The Touch is gone, replaced with this for $139 sans offers. The capable Kobo Touch and Nook Touch are $99.
$40 for a light and whiter background? I'll continue to use my $4.50 clip-on light, thanks.
Kindles aren't at the head of the price versus performance curve anymore.
I probably won't be upgrading from my 3rd-gen kindle either, but somehow i doubt amazon cares. I'm sure they make more off of book purchases from 3-year-old kindles than they do from the sale of new hardware. They want to sell kindles to as many people as they can, but once you've got a kindle all they need you to do is keep buying content.
Also, how do you search for words or phrases without a keyboard or touchpad? I find that a very handy ereader feature. Well worth $10.
Oh remember the days of paper books and indexes...
That said, the physical page-turn buttons are the best part. Without those, I'd never use the thing.
(I do passionately hate bad indexes, though.)
They make the money on content sales, as long as you keep buying books they are happier you don't purchase a new loss leader device.
It's possible that the new software couldn't be ported to the older hardware of course, and keeping multiple lines of software current takes more developer resources, but if Amazon doesn't want people to upgrade, then turning their hardware into abandonware seems like it's a counterproductive move.
Amazon makes a virtue internally of doing everything 'on a shoestring' supposedly, this is probably just an external reflection of that I guess.
Amazon seems the opposite; good software updates would make your old device feel new (just optimize speed and bugfixes, if nothing else). That would prevent people from upgrading to such "cheap" new models.
On the other hand maybe they expect to sell an order of magnitude more devices each generation. Also, depending whether the old devices end up in desk drawers or new users' hands it might all work out.
They've still pretty much abandoned the K2 & DX users, but perhaps the userbase for those is so small it isn't worth supporting them: it would probably be cheaper to just send them all new Kindles, but I doubt Amazon will do that...
So, no upgrade path for me. I'm sticking to my current Kindle.
What’s really remarkable about the device is how relaxing it is to use. ... The e-ink screen, at the cost of some functionality and elegance, is not only relaxing to the eyes, but also completely kills the low-grade but omnipresent anxiety of a touch screen. Which means you don’t have to worry about triggering a destructive action by accidentally brushing the screen somewhere and grip-placement is a lot less restrictive, i.e. if it’s most comfortable to hold by a corner of the actual screen, you can. The physical buttons mean that you know for sure when you’ve made an input. And the incredible battery life means I have literally never had to think about charging the device. I plug it in to sync to Instapaper (more on this later) often enough that I’ve never even come close discharging the whole battery, even on long trips. And while you get used to having to deal with all of these things using a modern smartphone, once you don’t have to anymore the immersiveness of the reading experience is truly unmatched. http://blog.byjoemoon.com/kindle
I really feel like in some contexts (reading device, cars) touch screens are more gimmick than feature.
(I don't know if the touchscreen Kindles have the same tap/slide interaction; I'm just reporting my experience with the Kindle hardware and software I have.)
It would be much less annoying if I had the option to disable sliding entirely and just respond to taps without regard to any sliding motion. Then I could tap one side of the screen or the other reliably.
But seriously, one side of the screen or the other? Haven't they heard that people hold the Nexus 7 with one hand while reading - and not always the same hand? If I'm holding it with my left hand, it's not easy to get my thumb all the way to the right side to do a tap page flip.
If this worked like the late great FictionWise eReader software, I'd have the option of ignoring all sliding motion and tapping the bottom of the screen for the next page or the top of the screen for the previous page. Then it would work identically with whichever hand I'm holding the device.
Now consider the Kindle Keyboard: Each side has a big next-page and a smaller previous-page button. It's trivial to hold the device with either hand and rest my thumb on the next-page button. I can click that button when I want, without moving my hand at all! No worries about tapping the wrong side of the screen, accidentally sliding the wrong way, or anything. It just works.
While I've got you, then, I'll mention the other two major features I really miss from eReader:
1) The ability to turn off right justification and select ragged right margin instead. This is what made eReader so usable on my tiny old Windows Mobile screens, and it still matters when reading on any phone-sized screen. The extra gaps and rivers of whitespace resulting from flush justification really interfere with readability.
2) The ability to turn off all animation. eReader would just show me the next page without no fuss. Of course the e-ink Kindles work like this, but all the Kindle apps seem to do some kind of animation.
Here's another big wishlist item. I would really like the ability to sync not to the farthest page read, but to the most recent page read. I often jump around in a book, look at footnotes at the end, etc. before starting to read through it from the beginning. This makes the "farthest page read" sync useless in many cases.
OK, this is obviously not the right forum for Kindle suggestions - if you can point me to a better place to send them in I'll be happy to do it. :-) Thanks!
The Kindle App on Android could need more customization features, i find it very important to be able to change the text color to a grey or brown on a black background.
On the Samsungs AMOLED Displays that don't emit any light when the color is black this makes for a great reading experience in the dark since its perfectly readable while dark enough without keeping you artificially long awake.
The only app i found that offers all the features i need is a chinese one, which sometimes shines through...
EDIT: It's called iReader if anyone is wondering: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.chaozh.iRe...
Having said that, I'm embarrassed to admit that I also had my email only in the email field in my profile, so if you went to look you wouldn't see it. That's fixed now! So drop me a note, or I'll look for your updated profile later. :-)
Yeah, this is one big problem. One-handed reading is key for public transit, where one hand may be occupied keeping yourself upright.
I also find that when I use the Kindle app on the iPad, or iBooks for that matter, I often end up with undesired taps changing the page, or even taking me to a page far from where I want to be. With physical buttons it's easier to avoid this. With touch screens and narrow bezels, it's very easy to encroach upon the screen and unintentionally 'tap', when you're just trying to hold onto the device.
I would prefer a model with touch and hard keys, but it doesn't look like that's forthcoming, so I stick with the basic model.
Still, I think I have some gifts for Christmas. While this might not be enough for me to upgrade it will be a nice gift for a few relatives I know who love to read.
I am however more interested in their other tablets as children's gifts.
On a side note, I will give Amazon credit for making a resilient device. I left mine out overnight and it got caught in a full down pour. Found it on the table outside with water to the brim. Shook it out, put it port side down in the bathroom sink with a hair dryer aimed at it for the morning and the damn think still works as well as day one.
Interesting, I often find myself swiping across my (3rd Gen Keyboard) screen wishing I didn't have to use those buttons to turn a page.
Slow UI or animations (ahem, looking at you iOS/OSX), are for me personally, a serious distraction to the reading experience.