Tag: Kindle Touch

The Kindle Touch is Back!

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Finger on Kindle Touch

Amazon stopped selling the Kindle Touch version of their e-readers back in October. (If you tried to go to its web page, Amazon would simply send your browser over to their web page for the Kindle Paperwhite.) But in a kind of pre-Easter miracle, the Kindle Touch has come back to life. It’s suddenly re-appeared for sale again at Amazon.com.

For a shortcut, just point your browser to
tinyurl.com/EasterKindleTouch

I’m one of the few people who owns of of each kind of Kindle that Amazon has ever released — and the Kindle Touch has always been my favorite. In 2011 I began building a word game for the Kindle with my friend Jeff, and we’d both bought a variety of used Kindles so we could see how our game performed on the different devices! I also discovered that I really liked the jumbo-sized screens on the Kindle DX, but in the end
my favorite feature was the light weight and easy handling of some of Amazon’s later Kindles. And yet strangely, I never warmed up to the Kindle Paperwhite, so for me the best touchscreen Kindle ever made was its 2011 predecessor, the Kindle Touch.

To be fair, the Kindle Paperwhite got some glowing reviews — pun intended — but there were also a few complaints. Back in October, I noted that after 676 reviews, the Paperwhite had earned an average rating of less than 3 and a half stars on Amazon (out of a possible five), a lower rating than any previous model of Amazon’s black-and-white Kindles. Amazon seemed to be positioning it as “version two” of their touchscreen Kindles, but this just made the Kindle Touch seem more like a “lost Kindle” — the fondly remembered device that you just couldn’t buy any more. For example, one technology site remembers that the Kindle Touch was “the last fully functional device the company released that had speakers and support for audiobooks.” (And the Kindle Touch came with much more storage space — 4 gigabytes — which is double the amount of storage that Amazon built into the Paperwhite….)

I could never get past the glowing screens on the Paperwhite, but that’s probably just because I’m such a fan of Amazon’s e-ink screens. The glow from the Paperwhite just became an annoying reminder that I was still reading on an electronic device, instead of enjoying a book-like page on a naturally-lit, e-ink screen. Again, I know people who love the extra contrast and crispness of the Kindle Paperwhite. (And I still think our Kindle word game still looks absolutely gorgeous on the glowing screens of the Kindle Paperwhite…) But my favorite Kindle — out of all the ones Amazon ever made — was always the Kindle Touch.

And yet, one dark day in October, people began to notice that the Kindle Touch was now listed as “unavailable” at Amazon.com. (Along with a warning that “We don’t know when or if this item will be back in stock.”) That seemed like the end of the Kindle Touch — forever.

Which is why I’m so excited that the Kindle Touch is back on sale again at Amazon.com.

Is Amazon Really Discontinuing the Kindle Touch?

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Did Amazon discontinue the Kindle Touch

So the Kindle Touch is currently listed as “unavailable” at Amazon.com (as shown in the screenshot above), followed by an even more discouraging notice. “We don’t know when or if this item will be back in stock.” And there’s an article reporting the same message 10 days ago from the British web site Tech Radar. While an Amazon spokesperson told TechRadar their device was still available through other retail “partners”, they also confirmed that it was “no longer available at Amazon.co.uk.”

So it’s looking like it’s “dead for now” — though Amazon could always have a secret plan for reviving the Kindle Touch sometime in the future. But currently Amazon is also no longer showing the Kindle Touch among the strip of all available Kindle models that’s displayed at the top of each Kindle’s web page. And Amazon’s U.S. web page for the Kindle Touch is now simply pointing shoppers to their new touchscreen Kindle Paperwhite devices (officially released just three weeks ago), which Amazon describes as a “newer model of this item.” Unfortunately, the new Paperwhite, with its built-in front lighting, is significantly different from the Kindle Touch, and it’s drawn at least a couple of dissatisfied reviews. 676 users have now given the new Paperwhite an average rating of less than 3 and a half stars on Amazon (out of a possible five), which is lower than any previous model of Amazon’s black-and-white Kindles.

Amazon’s averaged four stars for their Kindle and Kindle DX, and four and a half stars for the Kindle Keyboard. And even though it’s only been available for less than a year, the Kindle Touch already has an average rating of four stars (after racking up 6,471 reviews on its web page at Amazon). To be fair, the new Paperwhite has also received many positive reviews, too. And I still think our Kindle word game still looks absolutely gorgeous on the glowing screens of the Kindle Paperwhite…

But to head off any disappointment, Amazon’s now taken the unusual step of “preemptively disclosing” shortcomings of the Kindle Paperwhite right on its web page, “most likely to get out in front of user complaints,” C|Net reports. Towards the top of the Paperwhite web page, Amazon’s now linking to a web page from “the Kindle Team” which presents three disclaimers. (“Learn more about certain design decisions and changes from prior generations to help make an informed purchase,” the link promises.) On the page, Amazon acknowledges that at the bottom of the screen, the Paperwhite’s built-in light will sometimes provide uneven illumination under certain lighting conditions, and that, unlike the Kindle Touch, it doesn’t have audio or text-to-speech capabilities. And there’s also only 2 gigabytes of on-device storage, half of the storage that was available on the Kindle Touch.

Amazon may be suffering a backlash after high interest in the device, which they’re apparently trying to address before “Black Friday” and the big holiday shopping season. One day after its official release, Amazon had already sold out of their Kindle Paperwhite, with an Amazon executive conceding that pre-orders “have far exceeded our expectations.” But even three weeks later, new orders are still being delayed 4-6 weeks, with Amazon also imposing a new limit on orders of two per customers. Of course, that information also makes more sense now that we have the other piece of the puzzle. If the Kindle Touch really is unavailable now, that could explain the higher-than-expected demand for the new touchscreen Kindle Paperwhite!

But it’s also got me wondering if Amazon might bring back their older Kindle Touch devices — especially if they’re having trouble filling orders for the Kindle Paperwhite during the crucial Christmas shopping season. I wouldn’t be absolutely surprised if Amazon suddenly announced they were bringing back the Kindle Touch for a special a sale on Black Friday. Amazon wants customers to be happy, so it’d make perfect sense to give Kindle them a choice for their touchscreen Kindles.

After all, Amazon’s real goal is to just to sell you a Kindle. They don’t necessarily care which one!

Big News for Kindle Touch owners!

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Throw in the Vowel - a Kindle word game

If you own a Kindle Touch, here’s two very important announcements.

First, Amazon’s Kindle Store finally got a Kindle Touch version of a new word game this week. It’s called “Throw in the Vowel” — I’m the game’s co-author — and it was released in February for all the other Kindle models. But this Kindle Touch version is even easier to play, since you just tap your finger to make choices on the screen. And unlike some games, you don’t even have to type in the letters in the words to submit your guesses!

You can find a copy at tinyURL.com/ThrowInTheVowel , and the game represents a real milestone. For the last four months, we’ve been fine-tuning this touchscreen version, so it was a real thrill to finally see all the letters jumping happily around the screen in response to my fingertip! And while we were preparing this game, we also learned a lot about the Kindle Touch. For example, we’ve already adapted our game for the next generation of Amazon’s Kindle Touch software!

That software is already “available” for Kindle Touch owners, but right now you have to install it yourself. Eight weeks ago, Amazon’s created a special web page where you can download the new software, along with some easy instructions for how to perform that upgrade. (Just point your web browser to tinyurl.com/KindleTouchUpgrade ). I imagine that Amazon will eventually send this software out automatically over the wireless connection, and they’ll start including it with the Kindle Touches that they’re selling in stores. But after working with it for a few weeks, I learned that this new software includes some really cool features!

For example, it allows you to translate any word in any book into another language, just by pressing your fingertip onto the word (and then selecting “Translation” from the menu that pops up.) You can even customize the Kindle itself, so all of its menus appear in one of six foreign languages. (Besides English, there’s German, French, Spanish, Italian, and Brazilian Portuguese.) And you can also read ebooks in “landscape mode” as well as portrait (a feature which wasn’t available on earlier versions of the device.) Best of all, whenever you’re searching for something, the new software tries to guess what you’re typing! That way, you can just select from one of its on-screen choices rather than having to finish typing out all of the words yourself!

Anyways, these two announcements have a common theme: there’s now new ways to enjoy your Kindle Touch! And I hope you’ll try out “Throw in the Vowel.” We spent over a year identifying 750 challenging words for our game, and polishing up the game’s “look and feel” just for the Kindle.

Now that it’s finally available for the Kindle Touch, it’s your chance to join in the fun!

Throw in the Vowel - a Kindle word game

The 10 Biggest Surprises about Amazon’s New Kindles

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New Amazon Kindle Touch web browser surprise

There’s been some unexpected discoveries in the details about Amazon’s four newest Kindles. I’ve tried to identify the 10 biggest surprises in the list below — starting with five bad surprises, and then five good.

1. There’s No 3G Web Browsing
“Browsing available only in Wi-Fi mode,” reads the incriminating words on the 3G version of the Kindle Touch. Reportedly over the weekend some Amazon customer service reps incorrectly told customers they could still use Amazon’s 3G network access for web browsing on the upcoming Kindle Touch. “We apologize for the confusion,” reads an official response Sunday night from “The Amazon Kindle team” in an online discussion forum at Amazon.com. “Our new Kindle Touch 3G enables you to connect to the Kindle Store, download books and periodicals, and access Wikipedia – all over 3G or Wi-Fi.” But… “Experimental web browsing (outside of Wikipedia) on Kindle Touch 3G is only available over Wi-Fi.”

2. Power Adapters Not Included
A USB cable is always included with any Kindle that you buy, so presumably you can always charge them just by plugging them into a USB port. But for both the new $79 Kindle and the Kindle Touch, Amazon’s not including a power adapter. (They’re sold separately, for $9.99).

3. One Miserable Keyboard
Originally I’d thought the $79 Kindle shipped with a touchscreen, because there isn’t a keyboard built into its plastic frame — just an on-screen keyboard. But apparently there’s no way to actually type letters into that onscreen keyboard — at least, not using the “touch-typing” that we’re used to with other devices. Instead, Amazon pulls up a picture of a keyboard, then lets you slowly nudge your controller key (up, down, or sideways) to gradually move a highlight across the keyboard — one key at a time — until it’s finally highlighting the next letter you want to type. (And then you press the controller one more time, to select that letter.)

79 Kindle keyboard uses controller instead of touchscreen
If you’re planning to input text to search Amazon’s Kindle Store, Wikipedia, or Google, and you’re buying a $79 Kindle — expect it to be a little awkward and time-consuming!

4. Your Personal Documents are now Stored at Amazon.com
Apparently now even if you e-mail a file to your Kindle, Amazon keeps a copy on their “cloud” servers. On Amazon’s interactive list on the “Manage Your Kindle” page (at Amazon.com/myk), users are now seeing documents listed that they’ve e-mailed directly to their Kindle. They’re listed after selecting the “Personal Documents” choice from a pull-down menu labelled “Your Kindle Library” (along with more menu choices for books, newspapers, magazines, blogs, audible audiobooks, and active content). The only choice for personal documents is deleting the document from your Kindle — but it shows how committed Amazon is to the concept of a “cloud,” a virtual Amazon-controlled space where your documents are always waiting in limbo, for whenever you want to access them again. If the entire document is also stored, this creates an automatic back-up copy, but some privacy-sensitive users might already feel weird if a multi-billion dollar corporation has suddenly started creating lists of their own personal documents and photos.

UPDATE: One of my readers contacted me saying that “your personal documents are only stored online if you choose to do so. By default, the option is turned on, but you can turn it off…”

5. Amazon Prime not Included
You’ll only get a one-month free trial of Amazon’s Prime shipping service when you buy a Kindle Fire tablet. Maybe Amazon’s figuring it’s such an essential part of the tablet experience, most customers will still be willing to pay an extra $79 for a one-year subscription. But I’d thought Amazon would offer a much longer trial to try luring Kindle Fire customers into buying more things from Amazon’s store.


Now here’s five of the biggest good surprises about Amazon’s new upcoming Kindles…


1. Kindle Fire will have a NetFlix App!
Besides watching video from Amazon’s online video store, you can also use a Kindle Fire tablet to watch online videos from NetFlix! (Besides sending DVDs to your home, NetFlix also has a streaming video service that lets customers “Watch Instantly” online.) And one technology blogger noted Amazon was emphasizing this point during their big announcement on Wednesday. “The video service is one of four big developers – along with Pandora, Facebook and Twitter – that should have apps ready for the Kindle Fire at launch, Amazon has said over and over again…”

2. The Kindle Fire Supports Flash
It’s easy to take Flash for granted when you’re surfing the web from a desktop computer – but it’s a big deal to have this capability in a tablet. Apple’s iPad travelled a rocky road while trying to get its own version of Flash, but Amazon’s tablet will have it fron its very first day.

3. The Silk Browser is Incredibly Fast
There’s already been some complaints about how Amazon’s handling privacy in the new web browser they built for their Kindle Fire tablet. But it’s been designed specifically to provide faster web browsing, using Amazon’s servers to pre-format web pages before they even get to your tablet. “That provides a much better user experience,” an Amazon engineer explains in an online video, and another engineer even acknowledges their goal was “to kind of change the whole game, and really re-think how do you do web.” (“It’ll seem like a traditional browser — just a lot better and a lot faster than you’re used to working with.”) That’s a big claim, but there’ll be a lot of happy Kindle Fire owners if Amazon can pull it off. “We were only shown a brief glimpse of the new Silk browser,” reported the technology bloggers at Engadget, “but we must say the thing appears to deliver on its promises.”

4. One Special Offer Can Pay for the Cost of a Kindle.
Amazon knows customers don’t necessarily want ads on their Kindle – but they’ve worked hard to line up some very attractive offers. “[S]pending $114 on the Kindle saved me 20 percent on buying a new Apple MacBook Air,” reported one finance columnist, “a savings of $200.” He notes there’s been other discounts which exceed the original price of a Kindle with Special Offers, including a 20% discount on new LCD television screens. (“Some KSO buyers saved hundreds of dollars on their new TVs,” the columnist notes!)

5. Amazon’s Selling Kindle Fire at a Loss
Amazon’s also spreading around some other big discounts. The day after Amazon announced their new Kindles, their stock dropped more than $7 a share — a whopping 3.16%. It more than wiped out the 2.5% gain from Wednesday when they’d first announced their new Kindles. Amazon’s stock continued dropping on Friday — another 2.79% — but what’s bad for investors is often good for consumers. The stock drop is apparently tied to a report from an influential stock analyst who believes Amazon is selling each Kindle Fire tablet at a $50 loss.

On the big day when the new Kindles were finally announced, CEO Jeff Bezos posted a special message on the front page at Amazon.com. “There are two types of companies: those that work hard to charge customers more, and those that work hard to charge customers less…

“We are firmly in the second camp.”


Want to pre-order a Kindle Fire tablet? Click here!

Or click here for the new $79 Kindle!


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What’s Changed in Amazon’s 4 New Kindles?

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Amazon's new touchscreen Kindle Touch

UPDATE: For Black Friday weekend, Amazon’s also offering a 32% discount on their old tablet-sized Kindle DX!

Wow! Amazon announced four new Kindles yesterday, including a cheap $79 Kindle. (I’ve spent the last 24 hours studying all the cool new features!) As expected, Amazon announced a color, iPad-style tablet, and they also announced three new versions of their beloved black-and-white, e-ink Kindles. All but one of the new devices come with a touchscreen keyboard (instead of having a keyboard built into the plastic frame), and Amazon will start shipping them to customers on November 21!

The most interesting surprise was that cheap $79 Kindle. It’s a new version of Amazon’s “Special Offers” Kindle, which uses slick advertising images for screensavers (and offers other deals at the bottom of its Home page). The earlier version became Amazon’s best-selling Kindle, due to its low price of just $114. Now the new version is $35 cheaper, though for $30 more, you can get another version without the special offers.

They’re calling this $79 one simply “Kindle” — a plain, bare-bones name for the simplest edition of their expanded “line” of Kindle products. And the older Kindle 3s are now referred to as the “Kindle Keyboard,” to distinguish them from the newer Kindles (which all have only a virtual on-screen keyboard.)

The screen on the new $79 “Kindle” is still six inches (diagonally), though the device is now 18% smaller — just 6.5 inches tall — because Amazon’s replaced the built-in keyboard with a virtual keypad “that appears just when you need it.” It’s also 30% lighter than previous Kindles, weighing less than 6 ounces. (Previously the lightest Kindles were 8.5 ounces – and even the smallest Nook weighs 7.48 ounces!) But the biggest difference is its low price. Remember how exciting it was when refurbished “Special Offers” Kindles appeared for $84? Now the everyday price is even cheaper!

It’s a WiFi-only Kindle — but there’s some things to watch out for. For example, its battery life is half that of the Kindle 3. It’ll still last a long time — one month with the wireless turned off, versus two months for the Kindle 3. The $79 Kindle also got half as much storage space as the other Kindles, with just 2 gigabytes (instead of the 4 that you’d find on the other new e-ink Kindles or even a Kindle 3). And it also doesn’t have any audio capabilities, as far as I can tell. But there’s another new version of the Kindle which sells for $99 called “Kindle Touch.” Amazon describes it as “a new addition to the Kindle family with an easy-to-use touch screen that makes it easier than ever to turn pages, search, shop, and take notes.”

It also ships with the “Special Offers”, and it seems to be very similar to the new $79 Kindle, except its battery life is twice as long. Like the $79 Kindle, the $99 version can also only connect to the Kindle Store and the web through a local WiFi connection, though there’s also a 3G version for just $50 more (which also ships with the “Special Offers”). Ad-free versions of both the 3G and WiFi Kindle Touch are also available for $40 more.

“The new, latest-generation Kindle is for readers who want the lightest, most compact Kindle at an incredible price,” Amazon’s announcement explained yesterday. So what else is new in the Kindle Touch? There’s a special feature called X-Ray which Amazon says will let customers “explore the ‘bones of the book.'” With one tap, it’ll display all the passages in a book which mention characters, places, or historical figures and important ideas (and other topics of interest). “The vision is to have every important phrase in every book,” Amazon explained in their press release. “Amazon built X-Ray using its expertise in language processing and machine learning…and a deep library of book and character information.”

X-Ray will include pointers to each book’s Wikipedia page — and it also displays information from Shelfari, an online book community that Amazon acquired in 2008. (It’s a kind of social networking service for book lovers.) On Shelfari’s web site, users create virtual bookshelves, where they can review and rate books they’ve read, and even tag and discuss them. But on the new Kindle Touch, users can access a book’s plot summaries, quotes, character descriptions and other “fun book factoids”.

I was hoping Amazon was going to announce a big upgrade for the web browsers, but it looks like they saved that for their fourth new Kindle — the color, 7-inch tablet, “Kindle Fire” tablet. Amazon called it “a new class of Kindle that brings the same ease-of-use and deep integration of content that helped Kindle re-invent reading – to movies, TV shows, music, magazines, apps, books, games, and more.” Translation: it can play video, and it makes it easier to shop in the Kindle store.

It lets you shop for over 100,000 movies and TV shows to watch in Amazon’s online video store, and over 17 million songs from Amazon MP3. (And if you’re a member of Amazon’s “Prime” shipping service, over 11,000 movies and TV shows are free!) Amazon will always remember your position in a video if you need to finish watching it later — just like they do for Kindle ebooks. And obviously, the Kindle Fire can also display ebooks, many of which are now in full-color, including “thousands” of bestsellers, children’s books, comic books and cookbooks.

To showcase its color screen, Amazon’s landed the exclusive rights to 100 different graphic novels from D.C. Comics, including Alan Moore’s Watchmen, “which has never before been available in digital format.” Other graphic novels available exclusively on the new Kindle Fire include Batman: Arkham City, Superman: Earth One, and Green Lantern: Secret Origin. And of course, you’ll also be able to read newspapers and magazines in a new full-color layout on the Kindle, including USA Today, Wired, and The New Yorker. And in addition, Amazon has announced that Kindle Fire owners “will enjoy an exclusive free three-month trial to 17 Condé Nast magazines, including Vanity Fair, GQ and Glamour.”

And naturally, the device will run apps from Amazon’s app store, including popular games like Angry Birds and Plants vs. Zombies. (To draw customers, Amazon is still continuing their tradition of giving away a new paid app every day for free.) “Amazon designed the Kindle Fire user interface from the ground up to make it easier than ever to purchase, manage, and enjoy your digital content,” Amazon said in a press release Wednesday. “Just like with Kindle e-readers, Kindle Fire comes automatically pre-registered to your Amazon.com account so you can immediately start enjoying your digital content…”

Its screen is one-inch larger than a regular Kindle’s screen, and “the Kindle Fire display is chemically strengthened to be 20 times stiffer and 30 times harder than plastic,” according to Amazon, “which means it is incredibly durable and will stand up to accidental bumps and scrapes.” It displays 16 million colors in high resolution, and will weigh in at 14.6 ounces.

But putting all the technical specifications aside, Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos offered a much simpler description, calling it “a beautiful, full-color Kindle for movies, TV shows, music, books, magazines, apps, games, web browsing, and more, for only $199.”

Let the new era of Kindles begin!

Click here to see all of Amazon’s new Kindles