Kindle Review – Kindle Fire Review, Kindle 4 Review

The Kindle 3 is really good and it also helps highlight the amount of progress possible in a single eReader generation. Here is my Kindle 4 wishlist.

Kindle 4 – Features that would be really, really valuable

1. Speech to Text, Voice Notes, and Voice Commands - Kindle 3 should have the microphone enabled and let users type out notes, do hands free reading, use voice commands, and add voice notes and voice memos.
2. Communication Features for those who want them - A full-blown email client that works over WiFi and the option to use Skype and Google Chat over WiFi.
3. Touch – It would be good to have touch support. It makes things faster when navigating through Menus and when highlighting and adding notes.
4. Handwriting Recognition and Stylus support – Make the Kindle 4 an eReader plus eWriter by adding in support for writing with a stylus and support for handwriting recognition. Having scribbles on the book is all well and good but it’s far more usable if the Kindle 4 will convert those scribbles into text and create a small booklet of notes per book.
5. A better keyboard – Row for number keys, better keys, and slightly better laid out keys. No one minds a Kindle that is half an inch longer or even an inch longer if it makes the keyboard infinitely more usable. It would also be good to have lots of keyboard shortcuts like making the space bar a page turn button when in landscape mode.
6. Multi-level Folders, Tags, and Organization Features. Folders/Collections is a great addition. The next step in its evolution ought to be multi-level folders or some other way of allowing more organization. This would probably confuse lots of users so there would have to be a way to make it simple. Perhaps tags are a better solution than multi-level folders.
7. A lot more hooks in the Kindle App Store API and in general. For App Store it would be good to see sound APIs, ability to do apps that can access the books on the Kindle 4, ability to override the font choice and custom screensavers. For Kindle 4 itself it would be good to get personalization of Menus and buttons and ability to add shortcuts.

Kindle 3 is a really, really solid release and Amazon can build on it to make Kindle 4 an equally impressive release.

Kindle 4 – Features that would be nice to have

1. Sub $100 price – It would be great to see this. However, the $139 price of the Kindle WiFi is low enough and a Kindle 4 in the $139 to $189 price range would be fine.
2. Support for Library Books and ePub – This would get a lot of people to switch over. The downside is that support for DRM protected ePub would mean Amazon’s Kindle book revenues could take a big hit. The latter possibility is pretty scary and don’t see Amazon opening up to epub any time soon.
3. Unbreakable, flexible screens – Even hard to break screens are fine. Kindle 4 should consider using flexible eInk screens and case design that cushions impact (or routes it to a particular non-delicate part) to create a Kindle 4 that is much harder to break. This would be particularly useful when Kindle 4 is used by children.
4. Color Screens – While some groups like students probably consider this a must have for most people color is a luxury when it comes to reading books. It would be nice to have color but not at the cost of readability or price so Kindle 4 doesn’t have to have it.
5. Custom Screensavers - An app or feature that lets users choose what photos go into their screensaver. Also the option to have slideshows and different settings.
6. Ability to add own fonts – Wouldn’t even mind paying to be able to choose a particular favorite font out of a choice of fonts.
7. Option to require Password before purchase and other parental controls. Perhaps a ‘Child Mode’ that is started by using your password and that allows children to only read books in a particular folder and keeps them out of Kindle Store, browser, and other folders.
8. Individual Clippings file of notes and highlights for each book. A giant list with words and word meanings that includes all words looked up in the dictionary.
9. Full Unicode support and the option for users to choose/load their own font. Example: The Korean font wasn’t very good and if there had been an option for users to load their own fonts they could have chosen something better.
10. Text to Speech in PDFs and better PDF support for highlighting and notes (currently it doesn’t work for some PDFs).
11. A better home page. There should definitely be some improvements made to the home page – perhaps cover view, perhaps something else. If Kindle 4 has touch then it opens up a lot of possibilities.

Overall, the Kindle 3 has improved in 15 or more significant ways. It’s going to be difficult for Kindle 4 to make a similar jump – We can hope it does. If Kindle 4 is to Kindle 3 what the Kindle 3 is to the second generation of eReaders it’d be awesome.

Filed under: kindle 4 Tagged: | kindle 4, kindle 4 wishlist