Kindle Review – Kindle Phone Review, Kindle Fire HD Review

The Kindle might see a new version, Kindle 4, sometime in end 2011 or in early 2012. Kindle 4 will probably have some new features, a whole bunch of incremental improvements, and perhaps even a jump or two in technology.

There’s a very interesting discussion currently going on at the official Kindle forum - ‘A wishlist for the 4th generation Kindle’.

Kindle owners’ Kindle 4 wishlist

Here’s what people are wishing for, with my thoughts in italics -

Note: Have put my favorite suggestions at the top.

1. A faster processor, with faster web page downloads. Faster processor would definitely be nice. Web page downloads are probably restricted by speed of the 3G connection, or perhaps by some sort of throttling courtesy AT&T. 
2. Nested Collections (collections within collections). This would be a sweet feature addition.
3. 7″ screen. A wonderful suggestion.
4. Higher resolution screen. Another great suggestion. We have had more than enough contrast improvements – time to improve the resolution.
5. Custom Screensavers. We can hope. Also a few people asking for image packs – what a splendid idea.
6. Support for Library Books. Not many people mentioned this – which was very surprising.
7. Number keys with @ in a row above QWERTY keys. Please bring this back, Amazon.
8. Slide-out keyboard. An interesting suggestion.
9. Better Keyboard. Yes. A proper keyboard would be a huge Kindle advantage – it’s time Amazon built a top notch Kindle keyboard.
10. Flexible Kindle that can be bent as the user pleases. It would also make the Kindle very hard to break when dropped – hopefully.
11. A more streamlined interface with better sorting. Quite a few people asking for this.
12. Multiple user profiles on a Kindle. Different readers could share a Kindle better. Amazon probably wants each user to buy a Kindle of her/his own so it’s doubtful Amazon will ever add this.
13. Turn on the microphone. Amen to that.
14. A backlight. There’s no reason the pull out light can’t be ‘in the Kindle’.
15. Allow books from other sources. Not a lot of people asking for this. Little chance Amazon adds this feature.
16. Bring back the memory card slot. Another great suggestion.
17. Color – with the option to turn it on or off. Color would certainly be nice.
18. A touchscreen. Just one person asked for this – this would add a lot if done right. Most of the gains would not be in reading though.
19. Ability to manage Kindle collections on the PC. That would be a useful feature.
20. Letters that don’t rub off. It would be nice if Kindle owners didn’t find the letters on their Kindle’s keyboards getting rubbed off. 
21. Books that are already read being marked as such. Such a simple addition and it would add so much value.
22. Better support for images in books.
23. Download all ebooks to Kindle in one go. This would certainly be nice – except Amazon and AT&T would both have heart attacks.
24. The ability to choose what music to play and the ability to organize music. Agreed. The current music controls are painful.
25. Make the menus wrap-around so that pressing down at the bottom goes to the top-most item, and pressing up at the top goes to the bottom-most item.
26. 1-click bookmark. If something simpler than Alt+B can be done that would be nice. Perhaps use Shift as the bookmark key.
27. Option to reset ‘last page read’.
28. Smaller Bezel. This is already too small for some people, so not sure if it’s a good idea.
29. Buttons to feel more rubbery. Don’t even know what that means.
30. More Graphic Battery Monitor. Agreed.
31. Battery Indicator as a Percentage. This would do the trick too.
32. Wireless headset. Lots of requests for this. Kindle 4 would have to have bluetooth added in.
33. More Graphic Memory Monitor. Don’t know.
34. Bigger battery that supports 2 corner reading lights. Don’t know about this one.
35. Brightness settings for the reading light. A good idea – a dimmer would be nice.
36. Replaceable battery and battery life monitor. The latter sounds too macabre – Your Battery has 27 days to live. Get the coffin ready. Buy a book of poems by Sylvia Plath.
37. Ability to organize books by publication date. Very useful.
38. Spill and Water Resistant. Interesting.
39. Ability to specify the time period after which the Kindle screensaver will appear. A good suggestion.
40. Discount on Kindle 4 for existing Kindle owners. This would be beautiful.
41. Voice Commands. A very cool feature.
42. Louder sound settings for those with hearing problems. Great suggestion. 
43. On/off slider at the top instead of at the bottom. Wonder if there are any manufacturing benefits to having it at the bottom.

That’s a very impressive list of suggestions. It’s doubtful that any single person could have come up with a list half as good. You can find the Kindle 4 wishlist thread at Amazon – thank to Capt. D for starting it.

Here’s an interesting tip from Paxton -

you can directly select music now. Just add the MP3 to your documents folder instead of (or as well as) your Music folder. Then create a “Music Collection” to store them in. Then if you want to play songs one at a time, you can pick whichever one you want.

Will have to check that out. Note: It only plays one song at a time, and a song played this way doesn’t play in the background when reading.

My Kindle 4 wishlist

A Kindle Tablet that is Amazon’s equivalent of the Nook Color.

That’s it.

A hacked Nook Color with Kindle for Android is just too ghetto – It’s like someone did everything Steve Jobs asks his designers not to do. Kindle for Android just doesn’t cut it on Nook Color – the app needs to be built from the ground up as a reading tablet app.

The Nook Color’s default reading app is very good – However, it does keep losing your place in the book. More importantly, you don’t have your Kindle library.

If a Kindle Reading Tablet is not possible, then a flexible, foldable, ‘fits in your pocket’ Kindle 4 with handwriting recognition would be great. Color would be a nice bonus.

Filed under: kindle 4 | Tagged: kindle 4, kindle 4 wishlist | 21 Comments »

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 | 18 Comments »