Amazon Finally Has a Color Kindle (theverge.com) 41
Amazon has unveiled its first color e-reader, the Kindle Colorsoft Signature Edition, priced at $279.99. The 7-inch device, available for preorder with shipments starting October 30th, utilizes E Ink's Kaleido technology and a new display stack. Kevin Keith, head of Kindle products, claims the Colorsoft maintains Kindle's hallmark features while introducing color without compromising performance.
The e-reader boasts a 300ppi screen, enhanced LED pixels, and improved light distribution for vivid colors. It offers faster page turns and book openings compared to previous models. The color screen enhances the user interface, allowing for full-color book covers and a more vibrant standby display.
The e-reader boasts a 300ppi screen, enhanced LED pixels, and improved light distribution for vivid colors. It offers faster page turns and book openings compared to previous models. The color screen enhances the user interface, allowing for full-color book covers and a more vibrant standby display.
Re: DRM killed the Kindle for me (Score:2)
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You can do this now without Calibre if you choose the right format to download.
Nope. (Score:2)
That's a lie. I've got one right here that somebody gave me years ago. Says Kindle on it, has a color screen.
Why make stupid claims that are easily disprovable?
Why? (Score:1)
Re: Why? (Score:2)
How else would we know the author is being satirical?
I haven't a clue. ;-)
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That's a lie. I've got one right here that somebody gave me years ago. Says Kindle on it, has a color screen.
Why make stupid claims that are easily disprovable?
The headline is a little 'off.' It may be the first color eInk display Kindle. They just missed that one little tidbit: eInk.
It's neat to see some progress on color eInk, but it's still not enough to make me want a Kindle.
Re: Nope. (Score:3)
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The e-reader boasts a 300ppi screen, enhanced LED pixels, and improved light distribution for vivid colors.
To be fair, the summary also talks about LED pixels. It may run (non-Android?) e-reader software, but the eink display apparently has a "vivid" LED backlight (not even a 'frontlight' like some other epaper screens).
Backlit LED screen, color (and cheap) were the exact selling points of the other color Kindle devices. Headline could have said "Backlit, color Kindles now have an eink option."
Re: Nope. (Score:4, Insightful)
The LCD-based kindle tablets were simply a huge mistake on Amazon's part, and never really true kindles in the first place; although they technically carry the brand. If it was not e-ink based, then it was not suitable to sit down with and read on for long periods of time.
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I completely disagree. I can't look at e-ink for more than a few minutes, the eyestrain is nearly instant.
I can read a LCD screen for hours, no problem.
Re: Nope. (Score:1)
You just reminded me I had some fire tablet once. What garbage. Amazon eventually updated it to a brick, so through the window it went.
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They had to wait until the rebrand of the tablets to just "Fire" was complete. Because they never worked well as a Kindle device in the first place.
...so it has color ads (Score:3)
Beyond the ads will any of the content actually support color presentation?
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Comics for one are available in colour for e-readers. But it isn't all about content. One of the features of e-readers is to highlight and take notes about what you're reading. Coloured e-readers allow for (wait for it...) different coloured highlights and note colours.
Amazon isn't the first to make a colour e-reader. There's already quite a few on the market.
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Uses the lower quality Kaleido technology (Score:5, Interesting)
Isn't this supposed to be the lower quality technology Kaleido? Kaleido uses another layer of filters.
It is one more layer and it makes it even dimmer and more necessary to have the light.
Just compare the modern readers to the old ones and the old ones are so bright looking. The old ones did not have touch screen, e-pen or e-pencil to write stuff and didn't need all those layers. Now, they add layers and layers of useless features on the screen and then add a frontlight to get back the brightness they lost.
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Sure it's not reading much in the way of textbooks (really just PDFs filled with images from a scanner), comic books / manga, but for anything else it works just fine. An "upgrade" to a color model gives me so much less than what I have to give up in exchange, it's effectively a very expensive downgrade. (Got my original kindle
It could have a 3D display (Score:1)
if I can't load my own epubs and pdfs, it can fuck right off. No amount of technical merits will offset the ick of being locked in Amazon's icky ecosystem.
Re:It could have a 3D display (Score:4, Informative)
why wouldnt you be able to? You can do that today with any kindle
Re: It could have a 3D display (Score:2)
"The ick"? What are you, 9?
Re:It could have a 3D display (Score:4, Informative)
if I can't load my own epubs and pdfs, it can fuck right off. No amount of technical merits will offset the ick of being locked in Amazon's icky ecosystem.
You can load your own pdfs and epubs. It shows up as a device/drive when connected via USB and you can drop your files there.
They even used to have this feature where you could e-mail your kindle the pdf or epub and it would show up there. I don't know if this still exists or not.
What would be "icky" is if they took out the feature where you can pay them not to show ads. I paid $20 and when you open your kindle, you go directly to your book. If you didn't pay that, you would be at an ad and then have to tap to get back to your book. I heard they removed the option to remove ads in some devices. Not sure if true or not though.
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> They even used to have this feature where you could e-mail your kindle the pdf or epub and it would show up there. I don't know if this still exists or not.
It does. There's now also a "Send to Kindle" desktop app that lets you drag and drop files that will automatically show up on your Kindle, without sending it to the Kindle's email address or connecting it via USB.
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Typing: "Can I load epubs and pdfs onto an Amazon Kindle" is shorter, faster, and more educational for you than writing a post to demonstrate the world your cluelessness.
wishy washy (Score:2)
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Looks to me like an old colorized black and white movie. I guess what they meant by "the technology is finally ready", was that it fits right in with the rest of the Temu-grade crap on Amazon.
Not the first (Score:1)
Re: Almost 3/4 iPhone 6s+ dpi! (Score:1)
It's only 300dpi when it's black and white, it's only 150spi when it's color...
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Smaller screen and lower resolution than an iPad mini gets you excited?
The hardware is fine (Score:4, Interesting)
Waste of time (Score:2)
I think color e-ink is really cool but 99% of e-books only use it on their cover. So is it really worth the added cost? Yeah you might see a more attractive book cover, but the actual content is still black and white. And even if Amazon / Kobo or whoever tried to put magazines on their devices they would look terrible. Because color e-ink is a very primitive process, colorizing a gray scale page underneath. It's not vivid, responsive or high resolution.
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I believe that this is mostly for comic book / graphic novel readers. But my kobo eats through the battery when reading a PDF, but survives on a month's charge when reading epubs. I do not know if the kindles fair better, but color on an ereader doesn't seem like much of a selling point to me either.
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It'll look bad for comics too. I've seen color e-ink screens working and the effect is very washed out. They have conventional e-ink layer with about 16 levels of gray scale and then an RGB filter in front tints the gray scale a little bit. It's not a vivid color, just a tint. So if your comic book had a red title, you'll see it as pinky-grey on the e-reader. It is sufficient to convey color but it the saturation and contrast is not great.
I also like to pinch and zoom when I'm reading PDFs or comics or othe
Not if you use the highlighter functions... (Score:2)
I use the highlighter function in my e-books all the time. The platform supports highlighting things in yellow, green, blue, and pink (and maybe others), and when I read on my iPad or Galaxy Tab I see those colors. Back on my Kindle, they are all (obviously) gray and not as useful (I color code my highlights.)
So, not totally useless for everyone. But WORTH it? That's a toughie, given that I have an iPad and Galaxy Tab...
this is cool... too bad Sony gave up on the tech (Score:2)
Sony used to be leading in e-ink. Then for some reason, gave up on the market. It's unfortunate. They had a great collection and supported what needed to be supported without DRM issues.
But glad someone kept development on the tech... been 30+ years, and we finally have an affordable color e-ink available. That took some serious materials science research to accomplish.