Here are my wishlists for the Features I’d like to see in Kindle V2 and in Kindle V3. The price cut (i found out about it today) inspired me to finally polish these a bit. What would be your personal most wanted features?
Kindle V2 Wishlist
- Price: Cut the Kindle’s Price. This is the single biggest deterrent to most people. Cut it more than just the 40$ which I’ll give props to Amazon for.
- Design: Make it look prettier and make it customizable. This will be especially big when Amazon starts targeting the Kindle at teenagers and kids in general and girls in particular. Provide colour options and accessories and allowing customizations like etching (like Apple provides for ipods) and tag on bookmarks and stickers.
- Extend Functionality: eInk writeable screen. This is big, especially in context of school and college use as it goes from ebook reader to ebook + journal. There also needs to be exceptionally good usability in terms of switching from textbook mode to internet mode to book mode to journal mode. Also redesigning the homepage would be a big plus (which brings me to perhaps the two single most wanted features on my list)
- Extend Functionality: Open up the linux platform to extensions. At this point you can keep the closed garden and limit it to only the amazon store.
- Extend Functionality: Let people sell applications for the Kindle, along with books, in the Kindle Store.
- Usability: Make it a Colour Screen. Colour adds a whole new dimension.
- Functionality: PDF Support built in. Perhaps even put the convertor program that Amazon currently uses when you email them onto the Kindle. Else, get mobipocket creator on the kindle and automate the conversion. Yet another option is to use this script + process at mobileread forums. (courtesy http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2007/11/19/15-things-i-just-lea.html)
- Extend Functionality: Make the Browser a REAL browser.
- Extend Functionality: Be able to buy anything from Amazon.
- Community: Make it social and add in Kindle to Kindle chat + support it with an internet based online social network that both Kindle owners and Amazon users can join. Kindle book clubs and let anyone with a kindle start their own book club.
- Amazon Kindle Sharing Model: You can lend out your book physically i.e. Transfer ownership. And allow transferring back (perhaps limit it to one person per book). this atleast allows for some amount of sharing. Alternately, let people share out the first 2 or 3 chapters of a book (kindle store already allows you to read 1 chapter before buying).
- For the record i think DRM is a GOOD thing. So I have no ‘remove DRM’ on my wishlist.
- Usability: This is a big one – Redesign the back button and the cover to work better. Include a clip-on light (minor point in my book).
- Extend Functionality: Ramp up the Kindle to make it a semi-GPS. Include full support for local search and Maps, ideally both yahoo maps and google maps.
- Price: Free Blog Subscriptions. Its just insane to have paid Blog Subscriptions. At the most a 1 or 2$ a month subscription to all available blogs.
- Extend Functionability: Support for Images, JPG, TIF.
- Magazines and newspapers – allow people to store every single magazine/newspaper they ever bought in their Amazon account. Not just for the past 7 months.
- Community: Make Kindle Publishing more of a community thing and make it easier to spread the news. Haven’t thought about this enough to have a suggestion – however turning Kindle owners into book early adopters.
So that’s my list for V2 suggestions and before I go on to V3 suggestions there’s something Teresa at BoingBoing mentioned – A lot of these weird limitations make sense if you assume that Sprint required them in order to keep the Kindle from being adapted to purposes for which one would normally use a cellphone.
If that really is true Amazon needs to negotiate around it quickly. Google has been putting a lot of effort into freeing up the airwaves and even looking at things like using unused TV channels to get Android a foothold. There really isn’t much time to set up a good channel that Amazon controls to a reasonable extent. And that thought brings us to …
Kindle V3 Wishlist
- Price: Provide an ‘all the books you can buy’ model.
- Price: Option to get a Kindle free when you purchase 2 years of the ‘all the books you can buy’ model.
- Price: Lower the price point for books to 6.99$ or even 4.99$.
- Extend Functionality: Extend and be able to buy things from any store.
- Availability: Extend Kindle availability to outside the US.
- Usability: Jeffrey Han’s multi touch screen. I say usability because firstly this model makes things easier.
- Functionality Extensions: Let other stores allow shopping over the kindle.
- Fun: Add on a games module i.e. Sudoku, etc. and online games. I mean basic play everyday games like chess, online poker, etc. It’s running linux so this should be relatively straightforward. There are two categories of games here – games like crosswords, sudoku etc. which make a lot of sense and slightly more advanced games which perhaps don’t.
- [This is of course going away from its core functionality so i really don't know if this suggestion makes sense] Add Video Capabilities + integrate with Unbox. If TV on your phone is supposed to be such a big deal, wouldn’t the Kindle work better?
- Extend Functionality: Blog from your Kindle. This is really simple if you extend browser capabilities. However, asking for more than just that - make blogging simpler – add a button or shortcut to blog instantly.
- Encourage Development for the Kindle: Set up a prize for the best app/mashup for the kindle. There’s lots of scope as you have Amazon’s API, AWS, the kindle, the internet, google maps, mashups, flickr, gutneberg, and lots of other different elements you can bring together.
Filed under: kindle, kindle 2 Tagged: | kindle 2, kindle 2.0, kindle 3, kindle 3.0, kindle wishlist
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[...] See more here: Suggestions for Kindle V2.0 and Kindle V3.0 [...]
Regarding movies: right now the e-Ink screen used in the Kindle has a refresh rate of 700 ms (seven tenths of a second). Also the Kindle has 256 MB of memory, which won’t hold much movie (though maybe more than I thought, given that you only need to store 1 frame per .7 seconds). Add in that the screen is greyscale with 4 greys (though that can be bumped to 16 using a different controller chip), and the fact that e-Ink “ghosts” (keeps a faint after image of the previous display) unless the control chip briefly reverses the colors before displaying the new image (the “black flash” you see as the Kindle turns a page), and I’m thinking that the Kindle is for the written word. Movies, not so much.
I like the idea of the e-Ink writeable screen (if you mean a touch sensitive screen you can markup with a stylus, perhaps including handwriting recognition like a PDA . Then the keyboard space could become more screen space.)
PDF support would be great–except that to be useful it’s got to either convert the PDF to reflowable text (apparently non-trivial) or it’s got to have a screen big enough to display the PDF without shrinking it into unreadability. In any case, to be really useful, it would have to be possible to search the text of the PDF, like any other Kindle file.
Given your list of desired features for Kindle V2.0 and V3.0 (e.g. color screen, video, games, better Web browsing, more open development environment), it sounds like what you really want is an ultralight tablet PC. And eventually I think the feature set of the Kindle will converge with that of an ultralight table PC, and people will begin wonder why they should buy a specialized eBook reader instead of a general purpose PC.
The hardware and features of tablet PCs and Kindle-like devices will eventually converge: eInk displays (or their equivalent) will be cheap enough to be more common in all devices and the transition to solid state storage is well underway, meaning that tablet PCs will be much lighter and power efficient. I think the specialized eBook devices will lose to tablet PCs. Probably the best comparison in that sense is the Audrey, which was an “Internet appliance” released by 3COM in late 2000…
http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB114424637699117715-OO16F7Ov3DMZcs1xpbu5ksPDTl0_20070503.html
For the writeable screen that is what i meant.
For PDF support, I think viewing PDFs well is perhaps too big of an expectation. Being able to search the pdf – i have no idea.
Movies – it would have to be a new screen. thanks for the information on the 1 frame per .7 seconds. Our eyes can catch images up to approximately 1/20th of a second (that’s my limited understanding) so .7 seconds is way too slow – definitely rules out the current version of the e-Ink screen for movies.
One word: touchscreen
All the bells and whistles suggested might make it too complicated for me…..with low vision, I just want the page to be WHITE, not gray – and one more choice for larger font. Failing eyes NEED CONTRAST. I am loving this gift – it needs some ‘handling’ improvements, but it’s brought a lot of pleasure in just a month !!!! JB
I agree that the features listed sounds too much like a tablet PC (which would require a LOT more power / memory / etc than the existing model).
Personally, I’d like to see Amazon focus on just the ebook reader side of things. There are far more useful things they could do that are actually possible with the limited processing capabilties of the current system.
Now here are some things that actually COULD BE DONE…
- Get rid of the keyboard and make it fit inside a pocket in my coat. The browser sucks; the only use for the keyboard is typing in notes and for the cost of increasing the device size by 25%, I’d gladly give THAT up.
- Cut the price of books to $4-5 a book. I just bought a book yesterday for $14.07 that I can buy a new hardcopy for under $5.00… something is definately wrong here. I’m pretty sure ebooks don’t cost more to produce than a hardcopy.
- Intelligent arrangement of buttons.
- Programmers that give a damn. The 1.2 features were a joke – obviously Kindle 1.0 is being abandoned.
- Charge via USB.
- Get rid of the speaker.
- A smarter search engine that doesn’t search everything in the universe.
- In orther words, make it an ebook, not another cell-phone-like-device that tries to do everything… BADLY.
It’s not a laptop. Color, more memory, etc isn’t going to help with the ebook features. I’m really not sure why they put more memory in Kindle 2… I put a really fast 4GB in my Kindle 1 and loaded it with tons of content. The small processor choked and croaked. This thing is just a low-powered ebook reader and shouldn’t try to be everything else. (That’s why I love it).
These are things that could actually be implemented in the 3rd version… of course if doesn’t and keep loading more crap onboard, they’ll soon find themselved in competition with tablet PC’s and lose (as the above poster stated). Hopefully someone will figure out there is a niche market here and create a device specifically for this purpose.
If Kindle had a foreign dictionary the likes of Babylon, it could also serve as a great tool for learning languages. In addition, I would like to see Hebrew books available on Kindle.
Please make a Kindle that has quiet buttons! I like to read in bed but the clicking disturbs my husband. It is also very loud when sitting in a library, doctor waiting room, etc.
How about a kndle that opens and closes like a book with a left page and a right page????
Can you view all highlights at once? Another words can I read just my highlight continuously?
Bill, there are two ways to do this (one only works a bit) –
1) Go to the My clippings File on your Kindle. It lists all your highlights and notes across all books – since the book title is listed before the highlight/note you can choose to read just for the book you’re interested in. This would obviously work better if you read and mark books one at a time.
2) Go the ‘My Notes and Marks’ in the Menu within a book. It shows all your highlights – however, only a snippet (about 3 lines) and then you can go to the location. If your highlights and notes are short then you can read them all right there. Otherwise you would have to read them by going to each and then going back to My Marks and Notes.
How about a backlight on the screen or a night option where the background is black and letters are whites. It will help when you’re in a dimmed or darkroom. I like to read in bed and having to clip a light to the devise just seems so antiquated & inconvenient.
How about the page turners be in the 4 corners of the Kindle 3, thereby allowing convenience when reading in landscape or original. My thumbs are always there when holding the book in either position and the placement of the page turner isn’t as convenient. I wonder whether I am the only one that holds it that way. I know that I have a small hand, but that should be irrelevent.