Discussion

I'm never buying another Kindle, and neither should you

jihadjihad: The site causes cancer but the conclusion of TFA is sensible: just get a Kobo and be done with it. I had a Kindle for years but there's no reason to stick to Amazon for e-readers anymore.

seabrookmx: Kobo + Libby + Calibre has been my loadout for a decade. Works great!

laweijfmvo: > Amazon recently confirmed that starting May 20, these older models will lose all access to the Kindle Store. While you can technically keep reading books already on the device, the real kicker is the factory reset limitation built into the software. If you ever need to reset your device or try to register it to a new account after the deadline, it becomes a literal paperweight. is this true though? You can't browse the store on the device, but you can buy and manage your books on amazon.com, including sending them to the kindle; no?also, i use my kindle to read library books. will that still work?

christkv: calibre? I mean that's what I use with my old kindle.

andrewla: I'm still using a Kindle Oasis (and bought a couple of unopened used ones on eBay). I need the physical page turn buttons so Amazon has basically abandoned me. Trying out the Boox and Kobo readers I was immediately struck by their leggy and unresponsive UI (and this is saying something, coming from the kindle, which is already pretty laggy). I used a Nook in a demo and was impressed, but I'm leery of buying the ereader equivalent of a Zune.Have things improved since the last time I checked in? I really hate so much about the kindle and its ecosystem but it seems to be the best out there.

andrewla: In my view the death of the eReader is just the price fixing on ebooks -- that ebooks are sold at par with at a premium to physical books still bothers me, and I think is responsible for the fact that the Kindle is dying -- Amazon can't move enough ebooks at these price levels to be worth investing anything in interested new hardware.

andrewla: Has anyone done any interesting work on transflective / reflective frontlit LCD panels? It seems like this is rife for progress; LCDs can achieve densities and response rates that are beyond the reach of any eink device, and only the lack of good contrast stands in the way.

boplicity: I really want to like the Kobo. I really do. But I've had such bad luck with their devices. For example, sometimes the pages randomly start turning, really fast, so I completely lose my place. It also never reliably syncs between devices. And the integration with Overdrive is unreliable, only working some of the time. I also read it in the bath sometimes, which supposedly is one of the features available due to the water resistance, but the steam causes random clicks on the device, which makes it not really functional.For me, I've mostly switched to reading on my phone. Dark mode, plus OLED, works very well for my needs.

wao0uuno: I bought Kobo Libra about a year ago and it's rock solid although I'm not using any sync features. I turned on the airplane mode on day one. Just works.

tbyehl: I'm not buying another Kindle until there's a successor to the Voyage's "Limited Edition Premium Leather Origami Cover." If a competitor wants to lure me over, that is the way.

com2kid: [delayed]

mrec: > For example, sometimes the pages randomly start turning, really fast, so I completely lose my place.FWIW, I've had the same issue with my Kindle, and cleaning the screen seemed to fix it reliably.

boneitis: Granted, I'm more of a privacy-centric, airplane + jailbreak + KOReader kind of user, so the DRM+ecosystem aren't my cup of tea.I caught wind of the second-gen Boox Go 7 (I realize you already mentioned Boox) that runs Android, also available with color, almost immediately after I ordered a blacklisted Oasis yesterday. And do note, it doesn't seem to have the grip taper on the rear side, though the running Android and color screen look like a more-than worthwhile tradeoff to my tastes. (So that I could theoretically sync bookmarks and notes with my reading on my Android phone.)An un-registerable Oasis is drastically cheaper than that on the used market, so fortunately I was able to duck the buyer's remorse.

delecti: Is the Kindle dying? A cursory check suggests otherwise. Checking the sources on the "Sales" section of Wikipedia, they sold $5bn of devices in 2014 [0], and then hit a decade-long high in 2024 [1]. Now that's much to go on, and could easily have been worded carefully to imply things that aren't true. But at worst it seems like Kindle sales are doing fine. At a ballpark of $200/device, and assuming 2024 is as low as 2014, that means they sold a ballpark of 25 million devices in 2024. The percent of people reading ebooks annually is also increasing [2] (albeit slowly; arguably it's actually flat, but that's still not dying).https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Kindle#Sales[0] https://allthingsd.com/20130812/amazon-to-sell-4-5-billion-w...[1] https://tech.yahoo.com/phones/articles/amazon-unveils-kindle...[2] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/01/06/three-in-...

johngossman: I can understand why one would want to move from Kindle to another device, but this article starts by complaining that support is being dropped for devices from before 2013. I can even understand being upset by this, but I have absolutely no faith that whatever other device I switch to will still be supported in 10+ years. Could be. But I sure wouldn't count on it.

fmajid: Usually an unsupported device stops getting new functionality and security fixes. The unsupported Kindles lose existing functionality, i.e. the ability to add books. Not quite bricked unlike, say, Sonos, but you are limited to the books y already downloaded to them.This is inherent to DRM, and the reason why I would never have considered buying one in the first place. The eReader I have is a PocketBook Versa. Same price as a Kindle, extensible using microSD and I can add my non-DRM books however I want. Fortunately, Apple Books ePub FairPlay DRM is fairly easy to remove, so that's where I buy them.

chasil: Buy something that runs the latest LineageOS, and use the Kindle app.If you want greater security, substitute Graphene for Lineage.These will not be e-ink displays, but the longevity is perhaps the longest available from independent vendors.

Aeolun: Wait, wut? How would they stop me from adding new book to my kindle? I can just plug into USB and load directly right?

nerdix: No you can't do that on a kindle. They have a "send to kindle" feature that allows you to add non-Amazon purchased ebooks to your library. But that requires support from the backend (and an internet connection).I'm assuming send to kindle will no longer be supported on these older devices.

grimgrin: the only bit of the service i cared about was mailing my kindle address mobis/epubs (even the mobile kindle app receives these)today i use a boox page, after a friend complimented hishttps://shop.boox.com/products/page

alfanick: Why do those devices need 3GB RAM and 8-core CPU if they well, show books? There is no hurry there. Give us full-blown terminal and ssh/mosh at least.

grimgrin: probably because of android 11

blululu: Correct. It’s the ability to download books directly onto the device from Amazon that is being removed.

gjsman-1000: What's also not mentioned is that the discontinued devices don't support KFX.KFX is the modern kindle format, AZW meanwhile is heavily PDF-based. KFX was designed ground-up by Amazon, supports every modern feature they could think of, and presumably couldn't be backported to 2013 and earlier Kindles; AZW meanwhile was basically a wrapper around a subset of PDF. KFX is a complete redo, notable enough it's what "Enhanced Typesetting" on every Kindle product page means, not a small DRM upgrade.By doing this, all authors will soon receive guarantees that they will have the full KFX feature set when designing eBooks, and won't break AZW by accident. Trying to point this out though to the "it's about DRM" or "it's about obsolescence" crowd will get you downvoted to oblivion before the truth is even considered (speaking from experience, -4 when I dared suggest legitimate reasons exist) and is a prime example of echo chambers and deeply ingrained bias on this forum.

Barrin92: I don't follow the logic here. Users of old devices aren't asking for new features, they're merely asking for their devices not to be bricked. If an author wants to design against a new set of features they can do that, and that book will not be available on older hardware. Just like, if you want to build an Android app against a newer version you can do that without forcing every human being to replace their phone.

gjsman-1000: The old kindles can still read all previously downloaded content. Amazon's warning is literally exactly that - you can't download new books or redownload old books (i.e. AZW versions).

Barrin92: but that has nothing to do with what you just said. How would being able to continue to download, or purchase, old books affect the ability of authors to create books to new standards going forward? It's not like me being able to still buy an ebook version made in 2015 on my device from 2012 going to interfere with you publishing a book in 2026. That's just bricking the device in case the user ever has to reset their device or has not downloaded their library.

WorldMaker: It complicates the Store UX, too, if they have to add "This book is/is not supported by your device" warnings to every book which also needs to know which device you are intending. With the average kindle owner often buying books directly from Amazon.com rather than the on-device Store and often having 2+ devices, they'd possibly need an exponential number of those warnings ("This book is supported by your Kindle Oasis and Kindle Paperwhite C, but not your Kindle Paperwhite B or Kindle Paperwhite A").Also, maybe the publisher of that book in 2015 wants to upgrade to new ebook features for that book in 2026, for instance they want to add the physical book's original illustrations now that Kindle finally supports more illustrations. Does Amazon have to keep both of the 2015 and 2026 versions of the book depending on which device the user wants to use? How confused is the user when some of their devices have lovely illustrations and others don't? Should the user be able to choose to read the 2015 version of the file even on devices that support the 2026 version because they hate the book's illustrations and find them distracting?(That gets into a larger discussion that Amazon has always preferred updating books in place on kindles with later editions as they are published, which archivists hate especially because the kindle doesn't have a great "edition version number" to rely on to track for when Amazon has delivered an update to a file, but which often consumers prefer because typos slowly disappear and books subtly become better than the last time you read them, presuming the Publisher isn't doing some drastic bait and switch and it focused only on "plussing" the book.)

Alive-in-2025: Often big company drm software to read encrypted/drm files will have a time limit on it, where it will stop working if not updated - because they require knowing the current date. This is how they could block it.Dvd players didn't need to know the date. The new world of constantly evolving drm schemes falls into this world, making it east to eol devices if not updated

zepppotemkin: Among other things, if you become logged out of the device or it's reset you will no longer be able to login with an amazon account ( which is required ) to use the device

karmakurtisaani: I have Onyx Boox for more technical reading and Tolino for lighter entertainment. Never buying any Amazon hardware ever again.

idoubtit: If you have trouble with the default software on a Kobo ereader, you can install other applications aside it, then switch to them after boot. In my experience, the installation process is innocuous and straightforward.I use Koreader: after experimenting with various configuration parameters for a few days, the UI is now stable and tailored to my taste. Once in a while, I switch to another app: Plato is better at handling huge PDF files.Another bonus point is that I can mount my ereader as a USB mass-storage and rsync the git repository of my ebooks onto it.

WorldMaker: The original AZW format was MOBI-based, not PDF-based. MOBI originally from a company called MobiPocket, which Amazon eventually acquired, was built to be an ePub competitor and like ePub was an HTML and JS-based solution, but in a somewhat different, proprietary DRM-friendlier container format. (ePub is "just" a ZIP file, with the DRM applied sometimes inside the container rather than outside it.)MOBI stopped keeping up with ePub standards and standard features, in part because Amazon acquired MobiPocket. The KFX is just ePub with a new proprietary DRM container around the ZIP file that is ePub's container.The 2013 boundary is also the "supports ePUB files directly without a conversion process" boundary in Amazon's kindle OS. It's not just useful to know for book file authors, but as a consumer it becomes useful for a quick "Can I buy a standards compliant DRM-free EPUBs such as from sites like DriveThruFiction and just send them to my Kindle with no other steps?"

chocochunks: No Kindle supports ePub natively. Amazon converts ePub to a supported format when you use the send to kindle email service. If you just load the book on over USB it won't work.

WorldMaker: Every kindle that supports the new format (Kindle devices since 2013 with latest OS upgraded) support loading non-DRM ePubs directly over USB. There's no conversion anymore. (I've done this.)Amazon's not going to openly advertise that this deprecation is also the line in the sand where "non-DRM ePub just works", but that's what has happened.Of course one of the sadder problems with the ePub ecosystem is that it uses the same file extension for DRM contained and non-DRM contained ePubs. At a glance it isn't easy to tell if an ePub is not DRMed. Amazon does not support any of the existing ePub DRM schemes. Their own KFX DRM is very unique and proprietary and doesn't play nice with ePub DRM "standards". You can't load DRMed ePubs over USB, those don't work. Sometimes that gives an impression still that "Amazon does not support ePubs natively", but that's the nature of DRM and how much DRM hurts the entire ebook industry in every direction.

occamofsandwich: The ereader scene is just a disaster that shows the dangers of prioritizing DRM. I had ereaders for two decades, managed to read about 6 books on them and ultimately have almost nothing to do with related media forms because of the experience which replaced any actual reading routine with jumping through hoops.

wao0uuno: I've owned an ereader for about a decade and never felt that I need to jump through any hoops to read a book on it. I've been getting my books from some gal called Anna. Apparently she has a pretty impressive archive.

WolfeReader: I truly hope you're buying books as well - authors (and editors, illustrators, translators, etc) should be rewarded for their art.

cable2600: I have old Kindles that Amazon disabled from downloading new books. They are trying to force me to buy new Kindles, but I just use the Kindle reader app for my PC. Anyone can recommend an alternative to Kindle. Please let me know.

two_cents: > We are still dealing with a home screen that prioritizes advertisements and promoted recommendations over your actual library. Navigating a large collection of books remains a chore, with sluggish animations and a lack of robust folder management that has been a standard feature on rival devices for years. Such claims make me think that this article is biased.There are two tabs on main Kindle screen - Home and Library (and also pretty good search). In Library you can see all your books AND collections as folders.BOOX devices have their own issues https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33353640I think Kobo has same issues with DRM as Amazon does.Also, Kindle devices are cheaper, last time I checked, low end models of competitors, didn't have flush-front screens, like Paperwhite.I never had problems described in this article (but YMMV of course).

sobjornstad: Very frequently when I turn on my Kindle it starts on “Home”. I have never found anything on “Home” remotely useful, and just want to see the books that I already have on the device, but they keep pushing me over to the screen full of ads (and it often takes >5 seconds to switch screens after I tap on “Library” for some reason). I think that's what they're talking about.