[tomsem]

USB C has little market penetration at this point. Faster charging and data transfer require upgraded components, which confer little benefit for the Kindle’s purpose in life, and would probably make them more expensive (because Amazon might have to include a charger or adapter to avoid frustrating the 95% of people who don’t yet have USB C in their lives). If they are still making Kindles two years from now then maybe.

I would not assume very many people are going to be happy using Kindle for audiobooks. People may have other reasons for wanting 32GB, but in a world where 80% have smartphones, that is a far superior device in multiple ways. Audible on Kindle feature is just advertisement for Audible. They did this before, it was no match for even the cheapest MP3 player and was more costly besides. It’s physically never been optimal and the software will remain far more limited than Audible app on any other platform. That doesn’t mean people won’t buy one thinking they will use Audible on it - they are just wrong.

I know I’ve said if I get the new Oasis I’ll get 32GB but it is totally irrational on my part, I don’t have any good reason other than the usually reliable heuristic that ‘the base model doesn’t have enough storage’. Others may have a real use case (they read manga a lot or have large caches of ebooks carefully hoarded and like the idea of having that on device for some reason). Not me.