Kindle 4 Review

BREAKING NEWS: 29 September 2011. Four new Kindle handsets are on sale now. Choose from the cheapest Kindle reader ever - 2 Kindle Touch models - and the full color / touch tablet, Kindle Fire!

At present there is no solid information about when the Kindle 4 will be released. The current newest model is the Kindle 3 and this was only released in the summer of 2010. So it seems likely that a newer version of the Amazon Kindle will not come on sale for a while longer. The question is whether it will be available in 2011 or 2012?

As soon as the Kindle 4 release date is announced I shall be placing my order. Therefore we have to wait to give this handheld electronic book reader a full review.

In the meantime though I want to talk about some of my hopes regarding a newer version of the Amazon Kindle.

The interesting thing about the release of the Kindle 3 was that not long before it came out, the price of the Kindle 2 was reduced. Then the cost of the newer model was the same. The current Kindle 3 price is very good value for money. If Amazon continues this trend it will be a huge hit with electronic book users.

The thing is that since there are now so many people already using the Kindle, the question is who Amazon should be targeting as customers. They could potentially sell a new Kindle 4 to virgin customers for a higher price. But if they want existing Kindle users, especially those of us who own the 3rd generation model to upgrade, then unless the technology offers some amazing improvements, they will have to cut the price to entice lots of users to buy.

In my case, unless there is a huge price increase, I will be sure to get the newer version as soon as I can. I have totally fallen in love with the Kindle and it will not pain me at all to own both the 3rd and 4th generation models.

The question is, what improvements could be made to the Kindle 3?

• size and weight
• screen
• functionality
  

If you take a look at the picture on the right, you can see that even though the screen size of both the 2nd and 3rd generation models is the same, the total size of the Kindle 3 is less. It is also lighter weight than the Kindle 2 was. So following along these lines the Kindle 4 could potentially be even smaller. I am not desperate for this "improvement". It would be nice if it could be a touch lighter though.

The speed of page turning used to bother me when I first got my Kindle but now I am completely used to it. I actually think it is fine but I can remember thinking that it should be instantaneous. So this is something that may be able to be speeded up.

Also, the color of the electronic paper at the moment is light gray. I wonder how much this could be improved. The closer to white it can become, the better.

I am not particularly interested in a Kindle color display nor do I think the idea of a touch screen is great. The fact that this e-book reader does not have this fancy functionality is a large part of the appeal. When I am reading my Kindle, I often touch the screen, I would hate this to start bringing up menus when all I am doing is simply holding it.

The small keyboard is a bit fiddly. I wonder if doing away with the keyboard and just having some of the main buttons like, Menu, Home and the 5 way controller would be any good?

Perhaps the keyboard could be replaced by an electronic pen that we could use to highlight text and/or write our own notes. I am not sure how all this would work in practice. These are just some ideas that have crossed my mind about the design of the Kindle.

As far as I am concerned, as long as Amazon continue to keep the Kindle an almost dedicated electronic book reader, I will remain a loyal customer. I have looked at the iPad and think that it is really cool but I just do not know what I would do with it. The fact that the Amazon Kindle has one function, namely to read books, is a great thing. Everyone knows its purpose.

I hope that Amazon stay true to this idea when they bring out the new Kindle 4.