Quote:
Originally Posted by Keroberos
Why e-readers no longer have any extra features comes down to the way the hardware and software are designed to preform it's primary function--displaying eBooks. They use the slowest, lowest power using CPUs and the minimum amount of system memory (RAM) necessary to keep the cost down. Adding any extra hardware features (MP3/audio-book playback, ability to play games, or a non crappy web browser) would significantly increase hardware cost. Plus e-reader software is designed to put the hardware into an extreme sleep state when there is no user interaction taking place--turning pages, browsing for a book, changing settings, etc. This is how they can get such long battery lives out of a very small battery (again keeping costs down). Adding any extra features that only a very small subset of purchasers would use would raise the cost of the hardware too much.
E-readers also have a very low profit margin, so the major sellers of them are more interested in selling the books for those readers which are where the profits come from.
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The problem with this is that, the cheapest Kindle, the Kindle Basic (8th Generation) still uses pretty much the same speed CPU as the original Kindles, has the ability to play audio files over Bluetooth and has a web browser. There's no reason why it couldn't have some small "kindlet" type games that Kindles used to use. These are not battery intensive games.
But I'm not arguing for browsers or adding games, I just think that the ability to play podcasts is a nice addition to an eReader. The old eReaders could do it, there's no reason why the new ones couldn't as well.