When will the kindle touch get an update

[tomsem]

Originally Posted by Terry Brown

Well, I for one, would like a performance/bug fix update. My Touch slows down after a few days (everything page turns, context switches from reading to home, etc) and I must reboot. Also occasionally gets lost in a book and jumps to page 1.

Fix the bugs and performance issues!

Sounds like your KT might have a hardware problem. You might try getting a replacement.

[eSheri]

I do love my kindle but I must say, the home screen is indeed rather boring.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by eSheri

I do love my kindle but I must say, the home screen is indeed rather boring.

I believe the idea is that one should be entertained by the contents of the books one has loaded, rather than by the appearance of the home screen.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I believe the idea is that one should be entertained by the contents of the books one has loaded, rather than by the appearance of the home screen.

[alansplace]

Originally Posted by eSheri

I do love my kindle but I must say, the home screen is indeed rather boring.

Originally Posted by HarryT

I believe the idea is that one should be entertained by the contents of the books one has loaded, rather than by the appearance of the home screen.

Originally Posted by theducks

[mikeschr]

Some of the "fixes" people are mentioning were deliberate design choices - the way page numbers are handled, for example.
As a longtime software developer, I can't tell you how often a user insists that an interface element "should" work the way they think, and don't understand that there are an equal number of users lined up opposite them ready to complain if you change it.

[Larla]

Speaking on the subject of the UI: Kindle is pretty much alone of all the Touch E-readers by providing an essentially non-graphic UI.

I realize that, by using the same interface as the non-touch Kindle's, this allowed them to release the Touch sooner than they might have done otherwise. However, there are many of us that would prefer a GUI and finally make use of the cover art that we are dragging along in our e-book formats.

The concepts of touch and GUI are pretty much meant to go together. I fear that the KT may have increasing difficulties in competing with the other touch readers if they don't soon address this issue.

Please Kindle developers, add this capability sooner rather than later.

[DiapDealer]

Please Kindle developers, add this capability sooner rather than later.

I seriously doubt Amazon will add anything like that to any of the black & white 6" eInk readers. How many book covers can you fit on one screen and still make out what it is? Four? Six? I guess if they could make it a configurable choice between text or a cover-art browser, it would be fine, but it's certainly not anything I would ever use. I can barely make out the details of most full-screen images of the book's cover-art on a 6" eInk screen as it is. *shrugs*

[SCION]

Originally Posted by Larla

..I fear that the KT may have increasing difficulties in competing with the other touch readers if they don't soon address this issue.

I have complaints, but Amazon's bookstore and related offerings are enough to keep me around. Perhaps that's their take on it.

[Larla]

@DiapDealer -- all the touch competitors have already done something (GUI) on their 6" screens that doesn't look too bad. I am afraid the DOS days of lines of text is just a little behind the times; particularly for a touch interface.

@SCION -- I also chose the KT over the other touch E-readers because of the Amazon infrastructure (sales & support). That doesn't mean (as you say) that there aren't issues though. A UI on a touch e-reader that is not graphical is decades behind the technology curve.

[tomsem]

I don't have any issues with the Home screen the way it is. It could use a little polish but it is quite functional.

For example, Nook Touch shows only 5 items per page in 'list' mode, 6 in 'cover' mode. It takes easily twice the real estate of KT for its UI chrome.

[mewmartigan]

I wouldn't mind having covers on the homepage since I don't have many books. People with a bunch of books on their Kindle might not appreciate only have 4 displayed per page when trying to scroll to a certain book.
I imagine the redraw time when going back to the homepage would increase a bit too. I would rather have faster performance and less graphics.

[bluerfoot]

ok some people want page numbers some don't. I am not a designer but if not that hard couldn't amazon just offer it as a setting you could toggle on and off?

obviously many many people want this feature.

[DiapDealer]

In the past, page numbers were not an option... only location numbers and they were always visible. Then many people wanted page numbers while some were fine with locations. So they added the page numbers feature and moved both numbers off of the main page (so more screen was available for words). Many people were fine with this. Now many want to see either pages or locations all the time. Sure it might seem fairly simple to write a configurable setting into the firmware, but that doesn't mean that it is simple. Should the setting make the page numbers stay on the main screen? Or only when the menu button is clicked? What if someone wants to only see location numbers, but only when the menu button is clicked, and someone else wants to see page numbers all the time, but on the main screen? Someone else wants to see pages AND locations but only after you click the menu button, while someone else wants to see both numbers ALL the time. How do you satisfy everyone?

That doesn't even take into consideration the retraining their customer service tech reps would have to go through so they could properly handle questions pertaining to the various new user settings.

So they choose the lesser of two evils... all the info is there, you just have to click a button to see it. A few people are bugged on both ends of the spectrum, but the majority have learned to make it work.

[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by Larla

A UI on a touch e-reader that is not graphical is decades behind the technology curve.

It's decades behind the *design* curve, not the technology curve. The technology is the same.

And it's not clear to me that using thumbnails of cover is superior as a matter of function or design. On a 6" monochrome reader, where 99% of what you do is select a book to read and then read it, choosing from a list of books is very efficient in terms of recognizing what you are looking for and maximizing screen usage.

Modern computer interfaces are not post-text, either: you may tap on icons to run programs, or to find a particular folder - but once you open the folder, you are presented with a list of files that you scroll through and select.

And even though something like iTunes offers you the choice of viewing and using your music library as a list, as a collection of thumbnails of cover art, or using "cover flow" to flip through the album art, everyone I know uses the text list.

(And of course my 25" screen is a lot larger than my Kindle's screen, it is color, and some music cover art is iconic and easily recognized even decades later. None of this applies to books - in fact, not only do they have different covers on hardbacks vs. paperbacks, but every few years they update the cover. This doesn't happen with "Abbey Road").

Having said all that, I would like the option of having the cover of the book I'm currently reading be the screensaver if I stop reading while in the book.