Amazon has announced the 4 new Kindle devices, including the Colorsoft, the first colour Kindle. I find the release exiting and underwhelming at the same time.
It is undeniable that Amazon Kindle has the largest market share of the e-book market, and, by extension, the largest market share of e-readers. They work seamlessly with each other, after all. If you play within the Amazon’s rule, that is.
The new Kindles seem to be a reasonable upgrade. I think the e-ink technology has reach a saturation that it’s likely going to be incremental development. The newest Kindle Paperwhite got the new Carta 1300, which is nice.
The problem is the Colorsoft, the colour Kindle device. It’s exciting, because it’s the first colour Kindle device in the Amazon ecosystem, and many people who are exclusively buying Kindle device will get a chance to try the colour e-ink technology.
The underwhelming part is that, it’s the same Kaleido 3 screen that competitors has been pumping you for at least a year already. The first viable colour e-ink device I know is the BOOX Nova Air C, which is, like, 2 years old at this point? Even Kobo has the Kobo Libra Colour and Kobo Clara Colour released earlier this year. And the most surprising part? The Kobo devices are significantly cheaper than the Colorsoft.
It looks like Amazon is playing a huge catch-up, and furthermore, their device is facing a huge issue.
I am so glad I bought Kobo Libra Colour back when it was released. It has page turn button, something Amazon don’t think people wanted, has the same Kaleido 3 display, same 7" screen, and also has stylus support. With this device in hand, I have absolutely no reasons to buy any of the new Kindles.
The other important news of this release is that Amazon removed the ability to do “Download & Transfer.” This is a feature that allow you to download the book you purchased from Amazon website and load them to your Kindle via USB cable rather than downloading directly from the device.
The new device also communicate with over USB using the MTP protocol instead of UMS protocol of the older devices. This allows Amazon to hide parts of file-system from the user. And that’s exactly what they did: calibre can no longer manipulate the cover image folder to fix the sideloaded books’ covers.
Most people believe that this is a trend that Amazon will start cracking down on these things. I agree, but I don’t. Let me explain why.
1. Jailbreaking
I never understand why people would condemn Amazon when they fix a jailbreaking loopholes. Those are, as named, loopholes. Those are security vulnerabilities. Those should be fixed.
2. MTP over UMS
Using MTP allow Kindle device to 1) protect against file-system corruption, as UMS exposed the entire storage as a block device, including the partition table and 2) protect access to the system files.
From a security point of view, both of those should be done. Yes, it prevents calibre from doing something, but calibre was directly manipulating internal Kindle system files. Should these behaviours be condoned?
3. Disallow “Download & Transfer”
Back in the day, Wi-Fi was not as common as today. Download & Transfer was absolutely the right thing to have during those period. But these days, people who use Download & Transfer are mostly 1) doing DRM removal 2) those who keep Kindle always in the airplane mode.
I don’t see why Amazon should try to please the 1), and the 2) was also not using the device as Amazon intended.
I understand the complaints — I was doing some of them too when I was still using Kindle. But from Amazon point of view, these are never supported use cases.
I understood that many of these hacks/procedures were required back in the day. Prior to 2023, you can only use “Send to Kindle” with MOBI books, which is a very old format and does not support many new features. To get access to new feature, you need to use AZW3 or KFX formats. Those need to be loaded via USB, and cover hack, etc. were required.
But things has changed. With Amazon supporting EPUB with Send to Kindle, it delivers KFX books to Kindle device, which support all features on the Kindle device. There was also a bug fix in 2022 where Kindle will also now read book cover from the book file itself too, so everything via Send to Kindle now have a proper cover (when downloaded to the device). There are almost no downsides to using Send to Kindle. Books you sent will be classified under Personal Document though, which, IMO irrationally, some people despise.
To be honest, I used to keep my Kindle in airplane mode and do everything offline. But with improvement in the Send to Kindle services, in late 2023 I reset my Kindle and restart my library using Send to Kindle instead. It was a very good experience. That is, until I moved to Kobo Clara Colour.
You want to buy Amazon books, you should play be the Amazon’s rule. Otherwise, use other services.