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I'm really disappointed. The hardware buttons for the page turn are the essential feature i love about my Kindle Keyboard (3rd Gen). The integrated lighting i

I'm really disappointed. 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.

colanderman 14y ago
I agree w/r/t hardware buttons. My wife has a Kindle Touch, and I find it nigh unusable from a UI standpoint, since there is so little feedback after touching the screen to turn the page, especially with PDFs. (Did I accidentally flip backward? Did the software crash again?)
- jwr 14y ago
  I was also surprised that the basic model was not upgraded to the new screen. I think the cheapest kindle is actually the best one to get, because of hardware buttons. I won't be upgrading it anytime soon, it seems.
  - turtlebits 14y ago
    The basic model appears to have a higher contrast screen, at least.
    - jwr 14y ago
      Well, no. From what I can see, all the "PaperWhite" models have a touch screen (which I really do not want) and no hardware buttons (which I really do). So, no upgrade path for me. I'm sticking to my current Kindle.
- levesque 14y ago
  I use a nook touch, and I stopped using the mechanical buttons after I realized how nice it is to just tap the screen instead. A tap on the left side means back, tap on the right side forward. Not that hard, and feels really nice. I found swapping gestures to be too long, and slightly unstable as well. Does the kindle support page turns by tapping?
eupharis 14y ago
"Nothing I'd buy a new one for." Exactly my thought. I'll continue to use (and love) my Kindle Keyboard everyday. 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.
- notatoad 14y ago
  They're still at the head of the price curve if you look at the price that matters: $69. you don't really need a touch screen, a glow light, and the ads are not a big deal. Kindle is still the cheapest real player in the e-reader market. 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.
  - eupharis 14y ago
    The price of the Kobo goes down by $20 too if you throw in ads. 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...
    - danudey 14y ago
      I rarely do searches on my Kindle 4, and when I do there's a not-as-cumbersome-as-you'd-think-but-pretty-cumbersome-anyway keyboard that you can use. In exchange, I get a smaller, lighter Kindle that's easier to pack around. That said, the physical page-turn buttons are the best part. Without those, I'd never use the thing.
    - cdwhite 14y ago
      Maybe it's just me, but there are circumstances when I prefer a good index to a text search. If a term is informally introduced and used a couple of times in the few pages before it's defined, for example, I usually want the formal definition, and I can just remember that that's the second index entry rather than the first rather than Ctrl-G-ing my way through a bunch of uses. (I do passionately hate bad indexes, though.)
eclipxe 14y ago
Question - why do you prefer the hard keys to the touchscreen page turns? BTW the non-touch model is still available, it has the hard keys.
- Stratoscope 14y ago
  I have a Kindle Keyboard and a Nexus 7 with the Kindle app. Lately I've been reading more on the Nexus 7, but when I use the touchscreen to turn pages it has a very high error rate. I usually turn the page by tapping the screen on one side or the other, but as often as not, my tap has a bit of a slide to it, and if that slide goes the wrong way I get the wrong page. It's really very annoying. (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.
  - algolicious 14y ago
    You can turn the pages using the volume buttons (enabled from Settings on the home screen). I reallly love that feature.
  - eclipxe 14y ago
    Thanks for the detailed explanation! And also, thanks for the mention of Fictionwise! I was actually the dev manager for Fictionwise's entire eReader apps line (iPhone, Android, Mac, PC, Blackberry). I later moved to the Nook team after the acquisition and I'm currently on the Kindle team at Amazon. Your feedback is really valuable and hasn't fallen on deaf ears.
Tichy 14y ago
I think they are less concerned about making people buy another kindle than getting a kindle into the hands of everybody. They make money with selling ebooks.
- atestu 14y ago
  Yep, like they said in one slide, they don't want to make money when you buy it, they want to make money when you use it.
leoh 14y ago
Does every product launch have to be about replacing existing gear? Our expectation that good products need to replace what we have seems pathological. I have friends with first gen iPhones that they love. I've subsisted on a ten year old Nokia before...
wamatt 14y ago
The higher contrast is pretty neat, but was hoping Amazon had figured out how to significantly improve on the slow response rate of E-Ink. Slow UI or animations (ahem, looking at you iOS/OSX), are for me personally, a serious distraction to the reading experience.
joebadmo 14y ago
I agree. I wrote the following after having used my Kindle Keyboard for a few weeks: 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 http://blog.byjoemoon.com/kindle I really feel like in some contexts (reading device, cars) touch screens are more gimmick than feature.
firefoxman1 14y ago
> The hardware buttons for the page turn are the essential feature i love 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.
- twinsnes 14y ago
  I find that it depends on your seating position when reading. If you sit upright, it would be easy to hold the device with one hand and swipe with the other. I however often find myself laying on my side reading, this makes swiping quite a lot harder.
Shivetya 14y ago
Agree, being an owner of a Kindle Touch I am occasionally frustrated by its refusal to acknowledge I want to change pages. There are times where I simply turn it off and on just so I can page change. 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.

colanderman 14y ago

I agree w/r/t hardware buttons. My wife has a Kindle Touch, and I find it nigh unusable from a UI standpoint, since there is so little feedback after touching the screen to turn the page, especially with PDFs. (Did I accidentally flip backward? Did the software crash again?)

jwr 14y ago
I was also surprised that the basic model was not upgraded to the new screen. I think the cheapest kindle is actually the best one to get, because of hardware buttons. I won't be upgrading it anytime soon, it seems.
- turtlebits 14y ago
  The basic model appears to have a higher contrast screen, at least.
  - jwr 14y ago
    Well, no. From what I can see, all the "PaperWhite" models have a touch screen (which I really do not want) and no hardware buttons (which I really do). So, no upgrade path for me. I'm sticking to my current Kindle.
levesque 14y ago
I use a nook touch, and I stopped using the mechanical buttons after I realized how nice it is to just tap the screen instead. A tap on the left side means back, tap on the right side forward. Not that hard, and feels really nice. I found swapping gestures to be too long, and slightly unstable as well. Does the kindle support page turns by tapping?

eupharis 14y ago

"Nothing I'd buy a new one for." Exactly my thought. I'll continue to use (and love) my Kindle Keyboard everyday. 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.

notatoad 14y ago
They're still at the head of the price curve if you look at the price that matters: $69. you don't really need a touch screen, a glow light, and the ads are not a big deal. Kindle is still the cheapest real player in the e-reader market. 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.
- eupharis 14y ago
  The price of the Kobo goes down by $20 too if you throw in ads. 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...
  - danudey 14y ago
    I rarely do searches on my Kindle 4, and when I do there's a not-as-cumbersome-as-you'd-think-but-pretty-cumbersome-anyway keyboard that you can use. In exchange, I get a smaller, lighter Kindle that's easier to pack around. That said, the physical page-turn buttons are the best part. Without those, I'd never use the thing.
  - cdwhite 14y ago
    Maybe it's just me, but there are circumstances when I prefer a good index to a text search. If a term is informally introduced and used a couple of times in the few pages before it's defined, for example, I usually want the formal definition, and I can just remember that that's the second index entry rather than the first rather than Ctrl-G-ing my way through a bunch of uses. (I do passionately hate bad indexes, though.)

eclipxe 14y ago

Question - why do you prefer the hard keys to the touchscreen page turns? BTW the non-touch model is still available, it has the hard keys.

Stratoscope 14y ago
I have a Kindle Keyboard and a Nexus 7 with the Kindle app. Lately I've been reading more on the Nexus 7, but when I use the touchscreen to turn pages it has a very high error rate. I usually turn the page by tapping the screen on one side or the other, but as often as not, my tap has a bit of a slide to it, and if that slide goes the wrong way I get the wrong page. It's really very annoying. (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.
- algolicious 14y ago
  You can turn the pages using the volume buttons (enabled from Settings on the home screen). I reallly love that feature.
- eclipxe 14y ago
  Thanks for the detailed explanation! And also, thanks for the mention of Fictionwise! I was actually the dev manager for Fictionwise's entire eReader apps line (iPhone, Android, Mac, PC, Blackberry). I later moved to the Nook team after the acquisition and I'm currently on the Kindle team at Amazon. Your feedback is really valuable and hasn't fallen on deaf ears.

Tichy 14y ago

I think they are less concerned about making people buy another kindle than getting a kindle into the hands of everybody. They make money with selling ebooks.

atestu 14y ago
Yep, like they said in one slide, they don't want to make money when you buy it, they want to make money when you use it.

leoh 14y ago

Does every product launch have to be about replacing existing gear? Our expectation that good products need to replace what we have seems pathological. I have friends with first gen iPhones that they love. I've subsisted on a ten year old Nokia before...

wamatt 14y ago

The higher contrast is pretty neat, but was hoping Amazon had figured out how to significantly improve on the slow response rate of E-Ink. Slow UI or animations (ahem, looking at you iOS/OSX), are for me personally, a serious distraction to the reading experience.

joebadmo 14y ago

I agree. I wrote the following after having used my Kindle Keyboard for a few weeks: 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 http://blog.byjoemoon.com/kindle I really feel like in some contexts (reading device, cars) touch screens are more gimmick than feature.

firefoxman1 14y ago

> The hardware buttons for the page turn are the essential feature i love 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.

twinsnes 14y ago
I find that it depends on your seating position when reading. If you sit upright, it would be easy to hold the device with one hand and swipe with the other. I however often find myself laying on my side reading, this makes swiping quite a lot harder.

Shivetya 14y ago

Agree, being an owner of a Kindle Touch I am occasionally frustrated by its refusal to acknowledge I want to change pages. There are times where I simply turn it off and on just so I can page change. 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.