There was a moment when I thought (well, hoped) that e-readers and tablets might both be allowed to evolve. I was hoping for a Kindle with a few more features, but with all the advantages of an e-reader.
But, no. After all, selling the device is not the point. Amazon doesn't make money on the device; they make money on the content. And they can sell you a lot more different types of content on a Kindle Fire than they can on a Kindle.
So, the newer Kindles have fewer capabilities, not more. You want more than the minimum? Buy a Fire.
My dream Kindle?
- A real keyboard and a touch screen (why the heck not?)
- A simple but usable built-in note-taking program
- A basic (very basic) email client
- A slightly more functional music player
And, of course, Text-to-Speech, which the older Kindles have but the current ones don't.
Not a lot to ask (according to me, anyway), but it's not going to happen.
Oh, well. In general, nobody ever got rich designing things for me. When I was married, if we saw a new TV show that we really liked, we'd try to figure out how quickly it would be canceled. It was usually pretty quick.
I remember a great show called "Empire" (six episodes), and what was that one where they were writing a soap opera...
I have a Fire and I like it, but it’s definitely not perfect.
I wish it had HD capabilities but then could transform into a matte anti-glare paper screen for reading.
I would call it, magic… 😉
There was a rumor for a while that Amazon was going to release a tablet that would have a regular color screen on one side and a black & white e-ink screen on the other, with a cover that would flip around and cover whichever screen you weren’t using. Obviously this never happened, but it was an interesting idea.