News - Amazon to release colour e-ink readers this year?

[HEXUS]

Two weekend leaks suggest it may indeed be so.

Read more.

[crossy]

Not bothered for the Kindle Fire (not happy with it's not-quite-Android-ness), but a colour Kindle does appeal a lot - especially if it's not a silly price. If they can do the colour one for, say, less than £150 then I'd probably buy one.

Be ideal to stick all those manuals etc that I've currently got. Even better if they can do a deal with Zinio so I could get eBook magazine subscriptions sent to it.

[Scribe]

Not bothered for the Kindle Fire (not happy with it's not-quite-Android-ness), but a colour Kindle does appeal a lot - especially if it's not a silly price. If they can do the colour one for, say, less than £150 then I'd probably buy one.

Be ideal to stick all those manuals etc that I've currently got. Even better if they can do a deal with Zinio so I could get eBook magazine subscriptions sent to it.

Ditto on preferring the colour e-ink. Would be nice to see them slap in a Cortex-A9 or even a single core A15, colour screen would be great but it would really come into its own with a CPU fast enough to handle responsive web-browsing.

[tickleonthetum]

This would be great as we don't like the current Kindle's display. Also it means it would finally make sense to buy colour illustrated books for a Kindle!

Damn! Just saw a video of the tech. and it still does that Migraine inducing flicker when turning pages! They seriously need to sort that out for the next generation of readers!

[Hicks12]

that flickering wont be fixed for along time if ever, the reason e ink is extremely good in terms of power usage and readability is that it refreshes once, once the image is printed on the display it stays there till overwritten, an example is that the kindle arrives with a screen saying to charge before its even been switched on, as it uses 0 power once set, easy to say low bat charge .

Refreshing i found to be a non issue, its extremely quick and its less annoying that turning a page... must just be me

[crossy]

Damn! Just saw a video of the tech. and it still does that Migraine inducing flicker when turning pages! They seriously need to sort that out for the next generation of readers!

Same here - trying to use one of the older Kindles and after five minutes I started to feel "sea sick" - which was an achievement because I don't suffer from mal de mare.

That said, I was looking at my daughter's Kindle4 and the screen on that looks subtly different to the one I used before - the "pouring data down the screen" effect is a lot less pronounced. So I've got my fingers crossed that the next generation screens - which I'm guessing this colour screen would be - should be even better.

Killer use for the colour Kindle for me is definitely magazines - I'm guessing that the reason that there aren't more available presently is the limitations of the current monochrome screens. Like I said, I really hope that there's a way to get content that currently comes via Zinio.

[Scribe]

Well the colour panels match the improved timings of the Pearl panels in greyscale but can take up to 8 times longer to refresh a full page in colour, almost a full second.

[crossy]

Well the colour panels match the improved timings of the Pearl panels in greyscale but can take up to 8 times longer to refresh a full page in colour, almost a full second.

Darn! That's going to be unusable.

[Blastuk]

1. Close your eyes
2. Turn page
3. ????
4. PROFIT!!

[krazy_olie]

bleugh this is where e-books becomed doomed ad you start getting facebook updates whilst reading.
Sticking to paper

[crossy]

bleugh this is where e-books becomed doomed ad you start getting facebook updates whilst reading.
Sticking to paper

Answer: only turn on WiFi when you need to send a book => no adverts.

Or don't join Facebook.

[chqshaitan]

The reason why the kindle 4 does not have as dramatic a refresh as the previous models is because the whole screen is only wiped after 4 (or 8) refreshes, as opposed to the previous models doing it every time.

[Smudger]

I would consider this, but only if my current Kindle blew up, and then only if it was a reasonable price.

[crossy]

The reason why the kindle 4 does not have as dramatic a refresh as the previous models is because the whole screen is only wiped after 4 (or 8) refreshes, as opposed to the previous models doing it every time.

So you're saying that that the K4 only updates the screen with the changes made on a pixel-by-pixel basis, rather than clearing the screen and redrawing? Must admit that I thought that eInk screens always cleared and redrew, and assumed that this was an aspect of the technology used.

[Saracen]

I pretty much agree with crossy. A colour Kindle appeals to me a LOT if :-

- price is right, and
- battery life is still decent, and
- screen refresh is fast, at least as fast as Kindle 3, and
- screen quality is at least as good as mono K3 or K4 for text.

But, while colour would be nice and useful for some things, the vast bulk of what I use a Kindle for is reading books (novels, and some non-fiction) and for some technical stuff, and little of the latter and none of the former requires colour.

So while it'd be nice to have a Kindle Colour, it'd have to meet all those criteria or I'd rather stick to mono. I certainly would not compromise the mono capability, which is use all the time, for a colour capability which I'd use a small part of the time. After all, for me at least, reading books is mainly what I use it for and that's about text, not pictures. or it is for my books, anyway.