News - Are new Kindles on the horizon?

[HEXUS]

Old products and stock begin to disappear from the Amazon website.

Read more.

[Noxvayl]

It would be nice if they offered a trade-in for a new keyboard kindle with LEDs, I would be interested in trading mine in because during the winter it is a pain to read in energy saver light.

[crossy]

This time around, there have been suggestions of a Kindle Fire 2, with an improved display and all-round specs, Kindle e-readers that may feature LED front-lighting and, we know that colour e-ink displays are now widely available, should the firm wish to make use of them.

Kindle Fire 2 would have to be either very good or very cheap to make any headway against the Nexus7 as far as I'm concerned.
LED front lighting sounds good in theory, but surely unless they bulk the battery up to compensate then there's going to be complaints that the battery life takes a notable hit.
A colour Kindle sounds like a good idea to me - mainly because it'd surely make it possible to do magazines on a Kindle (yes I know there's magazines already available, but I can't see the publishers of something like T3 being happy to downgrade to monochrome). Technical books might also be more accessible if there was colour available. So if Amazon want offer a trade-in deal for some of the current Kindles against the new colour one, then put me down for a pre-order!
Just hope that the new variants don't insist on touch controls, since I prefer not to have grease marks on the screen I'm trying to read from.

How about a "Kindle Max" - A4 size? Not so good for books, but ideal for magazines. So the possibility of a nice subscription revenue stream.

recent changes on the Amazon US and UK websites signal that a release may be immanent

Typo at the end of that.

[Animus404]

I'd like a Colour A4 Kindle for technical docs and magazines/news papers. As for reading novels, I don't see any reason to upgrade from my Kindle Keyboard 3G, it's a super little device.

[bradyjames]

I'm not surprised the Kindle Keyboards are disappearing. They are older models and have been superseded by the Kindle Touch. I expect there will be new Kindle's out soon but I'm not sure this really is an indication that they are imminent because the Keyboards are not even the current latest generation models.

My Kindle keyboard got stolen about a month ago but I'm holding off on replacing because I want one with lighting built in for reading in bed so I'm really hoping the refresh this year introduces this feature.

[Flibster]

I've got 2 e-readers at the moment. A 3g Kindle Keyboard and a iRiver Cover Story. Both have advantages.

My personal wishlist is a bit of a mish-mash of readers.

7-8" screen
Touch screen
Hardware keyboard
Hardware page turn buttons *the single most irritating thing about the Touch*
Wifi, 3g & bluetooth
Open epub, CBR, doc, docx, ODF support, better PDF support
Ability to take written notes on it *kind of like the iRiver Cover Story can*
And the most unlikely one - MicroSD card

The one thing I'm not overly fussed about is a built in light. My kindle case has one and I've rarely used it. If it's too dark to read without the light, then I wouldn't normally be reading anyway.

[crossy]

My personal wishlist is a bit of a mish-mash of readers
Touch screen
Hardware keyboard
Hardware page turn buttons *the single most irritating thing about the Touch*

That's kind of confusing - why would you want the duplication of a hardware keyboard/page buttons and a touch screen?
Going to agree about the Touch - I tried a couple of demo models when I was thinking of buying mine and I just hated the interface - it just struck me as clunky and too sensitive.

Wifi, 3g & bluetooth
And the most unlikely one - MicroSD card

Just get a cheap tablet and put the Kindle app on it! Or were you actually thinking of something in the Kindle Fire range rather than the "normal" Kindles (the e-readers).

[Jingee]

There's no point in a Kindle without the hardware buttons to turn the pages!
Laziness level: 9000.

[Saracen]

That's kind of confusing - why would you want the duplication of a hardware keyboard/page buttons and a touch screen?
Going to agree about the Touch - I tried a couple of demo models when I was thinking of buying mine and I just hated the interface - it just struck me as clunky and too sensitive.....

That's what I thought .... until I bought one. Now, I actually prefer the touch.

[bradyjames]

Just get a cheap tablet and put the Kindle app on it! Or were you actually thinking of something in the Kindle Fire range rather than the "normal" Kindles (the e-readers).

A tablet is fine if you don't want to do much reading but if the primary purpose is reading then a dedicated eReader (Kindle 4, Kindle Touch but not Kindle Fire) has the following benefits:
-Battery life of up to a month.
-Screen that is clear in direct sunlight.
-Fast boot (roughly two seconds on my Kindle)
-Less eye strain from reading.
-Sharper, clearer text (personal opinion)

Tablets have many other advantages over an eReader but the advantages listed above are important for me because I do quite a lot of reading and it's just a much nicer experience on an eReader.

[Flibster]

That's kind of confusing - why would you want the duplication of a hardware keyboard/page buttons and a touch screen?
Going to agree about the Touch - I tried a couple of demo models when I was thinking of buying mine and I just hated the interface - it just struck me as clunky and too sensitive.

Touch screen for selecting things, highlighting passages, note taking *like the Cover Story*, web browsing and so on.

Hardware page buttons because they're imo nicer to use than swiping the screen.

Keyboard - just because I love hardware keyboards over touch screen ones - doesn't remove a large chunk of the screen when you want to use it for a start.

Just get a cheap tablet and put the Kindle app on it! Or were you actually thinking of something in the Kindle Fire range rather than the "normal" Kindles (the e-readers).

I have a tablet and it barely gets used anymore. E-ink screens are so much nicer to read from.

Wifi and 3g are fairly self explanatory. Bluetooth so I can load books onto the kindle without having to connect it up - or even send them from my phone if I want.

SD is a pipe dream really. If they were to increase the capacity from 4gb to 8gb, I'd be reasonably happy. Some technical PDF's I have are 350mb in size on their own.

[crossy]

There's no point in a Kindle without the hardware buttons to turn the pages!
Laziness level: 9000.

That's what I thought .... until I bought one. Now, I actually prefer the touch.

Nah Saracen, my blood pressure couldn't handle the strain of a Touch, i.e. "turn the page"; "turn .. the ... page"; "turn the bl**dy page!"; "arrgh, it's jumped 10 pages!" (and I freely admit that there might have been some "sensitivity" control or some such that would have sorted that). Give me simple "next" and "previous" page buttons!
Jingee - real laziness (and possibly an improvement) would be a touchless page turn - say a sweep gesture over the screen, or even voice (but I'd prefer the hand-based "flick" gesture). One thing I thought would be good were buttons on the corners you could use to do the page turn - downside being that those would interfere with cases (like the excellent Klevercase I've got).

Tablets have many other advantages over an eReader but the advantages listed above are important for me because I do quite a lot of reading and it's just a much nicer experience on an eReader.

Egg-sucking since I've got a couple of tablets and a Kindle. You kind of missed my point - if Flibster was looking for all that extra functionality then perhaps a cheap tablet would be better. I can't see a use for Bluetooth for example on an eReader. Likewise an SD slot seems a bit "unnecessary" when so many books can be accommodated on the the current hardware specs.

[Saracen]

Nah Saracen, my blood pressure couldn't handle the strain of a Touch, i.e. "turn the page"; "turn .. the ... page"; "turn the bl**dy page!"; "arrgh, it's jumped 10 pages!" (and I freely admit that there might have been some "sensitivity" control or some such that would have sorted that). Give me simple "next" and "previous" page buttons!
....

Maybe it's practice .... or just personal preference.

I've only ever had mine jump multiple pages a couple of times (maybe three), and rarely have to touch more than once to get it to turn. I hold the Kindle in one hand (usually left), and can go forward or back a page with a small movement of one finger on that hand.

One of my main reservations over the Kindle Keyboard was typing notes and annotations, but I find I'm actually a lot faster on the Touch on-screen KB than I was on the physical KB on my old Kindle.

And it's far easier for things like increasing/decreasing text size, or searching for page locations, etc.

I was VERY reluctant to go to the Touch, but didn't want 3G (or the price increase it implied) and I must admit that after about 2 days, I preferred the Touch to the old one.

[bradyjames]

Egg-sucking since I've got a couple of tablets and a Kindle. You kind of missed my point - if Flibster was looking for all that extra functionality then perhaps a cheap tablet would be better. I can't see a use for Bluetooth for example on an eReader. Likewise an SD slot seems a bit "unnecessary" when so many books can be accommodated on the the current hardware specs.

Ah I see. Agree that you can get plenty of books on built in memory. The only thing I can think of where SD would be useful is Audio books or MP3 music.

[shaz]

Kindle Fire 2 would have to be either very good or very cheap to make any headway against the Nexus7 as far as I'm concerned.
LED front lighting sounds good in theory, but surely unless they bulk the battery up to compensate then there's going to be complaints that the battery life takes a notable hit.

[bradyjames]

Kindle Fire 2 would have to be either very good or very cheap to make any headway against the Nexus7 as far as I'm concerned.
LED front lighting sounds good in theory, but surely unless they bulk the battery up to compensate then there's going to be complaints that the battery life takes a notable hit.

I think it would be a useful feature. It will only drain the battery when the light is on so it would only impact battery if used at night. There is a Nook 'Glowlight' with similar functionality and whilst it does impact battery life you still get about 40 hours of reading between charges if the light is left on all the time (which of course you wouldn't do in daytime or well lit area's).

My Kindle Keyboard has an Amazon cover which has a built in light but this takes power from the Kindle so it probably has the same sort of battery impact as a light built into the Kindle itself would have. However the cover is quite heavy and bulky and the light is not completely even so I think a built in option would be much better. Plus the cover is RRP £50!

My personal number one wish for the next gen Kindle is support for the ePub format but I doubt this will happen because it's not in Amazon's best interest. The Amazon propriety Kindle format is OK most of the time because their ebook pricing is very competative but ePub would be useful because you get more choice and the main reason I would like it is because I would then be able to read ebooks from my local library on my Kindle.