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Hardware

Amazon Finally Has a Color Kindle (theverge.com) 29

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.

Amazon Finally Has a Color Kindle

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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?

    • Cause we all want to read colored fonts? How else would we know the author is being satirical?
    • 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.

      • To be fair the summary does say e-reader. The kindle fire tablets were just underpowered android tablets with custom firmware.
        • 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."

        • 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.

    • 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.

  • by aaarrrgggh ( 9205 ) on Wednesday October 16, 2024 @12:10PM (#64869189)

    Beyond the ads will any of the content actually support color presentation?

  • by m00sh ( 2538182 ) on Wednesday October 16, 2024 @12:14PM (#64869201)

    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.

  • 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.

    • by ezelkow1 ( 693205 ) on Wednesday October 16, 2024 @12:46PM (#64869305)

      why wouldnt you be able to? You can do that today with any kindle

    • "The ick"? What are you, 9?

    • by m00sh ( 2538182 )

      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

  • Color as in, "I'm 90 years old with cataracts." sense.
    • 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.

  • The Amazon Fire tablet was originally called the Amazon Kindle Fire (a name still used by many people). It's always had a color screen.
  • The hardware is fine (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Snotnose ( 212196 ) on Wednesday October 16, 2024 @02:02PM (#64869551)
    What sucks is the software. I love my Kindle when I'm reading a book. I hate my Kindle when I'm trying to find a book to read. If my boss asked me to come up with the shittiest UI possible for a new product I doubt I could come up with anything as bad as what's on a Kindle.
  • 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.

    • 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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