Is Kindle Innovation Done?

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by haertig

I keep about a dozen books on my Kindle at a time. The others are in Calibre, where I do all my browsing, sorting, choosing, etc. I only stock my Kindle with a few "potential next reads".

I have a friend who has filled his PaperWhite3 memory with books. How does one even do that? That's a lot of books!

While I personally don't need the Kobo book management improvements, my friend could certainly benefit from them!

Sounds like your friend would benefit from a 32gig Kobo Forma.

[haertig]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Sounds like your friend would benefit from a 32gig Kobo Forma.

Thanks. I will suggest that to him. He is an avid reader. That's quite the understatement. He reads probably an entire book per day. He must be a speed reader or something. But he remembers all the details - characters, plots, authors, year of publication, etc. - even for stuff he read decades ago.

[ilovejedd]

Originally Posted by haertig

I have a friend who has filled his PaperWhite3 memory with books. How does one even do that? That's a lot of books!

In fairness, the normal PW3 only has around 3GB of usable space so it's not that hard to fill up.

[Richwood]

I have virtually all Kindle reader models, all still working. Basically other than refinements little has been new since the PW3 with the 300 DPI E-ink Carta screen. Two old features that were dropped that I would like to see reintroduced are the text to speech feature for most books that was dropped after the Kindle Touch and the reading progress bar that disappeared from the firmware on all models after the Kindle NT. Also like to see page turn buttons or sensors on all Kindle reader models. A text input function via a USB or Bluetooth keyboard would also be nice. Maybe a Bluetooth remote control too.

I doubt that we will see any major changes to the User Interface any time soon.

[salamanderjuice]

Originally Posted by haertig

I keep about a dozen books on my Kindle at a time. The others are in Calibre, where I do all my browsing, sorting, choosing, etc. I only stock my Kindle with a few "potential next reads".

I have a friend who has filled his PaperWhite3 memory with books. How does one even do that? That's a lot of books!

While I personally don't need the Kobo book management improvements, my friend could certainly benefit from them!

Easy to do if the books have pictures. My Kobo Aura One fits about 100 manga volumes, even some of my novels hit 50 MB in size from pictured like high res maps and photos.

They won't add it, but a microSD slot would be good. Why choose between 8GB and 32GB when you can add 256GB for like $50?

More font/typesetting customization would be good. When I had a Kindle I always found the font size was either too small or too big and there was no right size for me. Most tended on the super huge too. Who wants to see half a sentence on an entire page? Kobo is much much better in that regard. I'd also like to see more dictionaries available that integrate with the reader, even if I have to buy them. For reading in another language that would be super handy.

And, of course, the absolutely never gonna happen, ePub support.

[Ridcully]

Originally Posted by Richwood

I have virtually all Kindle reader models, all still working. Basically other than refinements little has been new since the PW3 with the 300 DPI E-ink Carta screen. Two old features that were dropped that I would like to see reintroduced are the text to speech feature for most books that was dropped after the Kindle Touch and the reading progress bar that disappeared from the firmware on all models after the Kindle NT. Also like to see page turn buttons or sensors on all Kindle reader models. A text input function via a USB or Bluetooth keyboard would also be nice. Maybe a Bluetooth remote control too.

I doubt that we will see any major changes to the User Interface any time soon.

There's still text to speech via bluetooth as an accessibility option for blind users but you have to put up with the rest of the blind user interface, and the TTS voice starts going on my nerves after a while. One thing I was excited about my last PW was audiobook support, but unfortunately it's limited to Audible and would probably require me to let the Kindle go online, so it's wholly useless. Page turner buttons yeah I miss those too, so much easier instead of going backwards or selecting text by mistake every so often, espec when I'm tired. New PW is also back to that gummy dirty-fingerprints back side, etc.

That's the sort of thing that grates me with Kindle. I've owned 3 Kindles manufactured over the span of 5 years, but none of them was what I'd call an upgrade over the previous one. You get some new features, lose old ones. Both times I got a new Kindle I already had someone lined up to whom I gave away my old Kindle. If I hadn't, I'd be really pissed at spending that much money for a mere novelty.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by Ridcully

There's still text to speech via bluetooth as an accessibility option for blind users but you have to put up with the rest of the blind user interface

A generic USB Audio and USB2Go adaptor (together under £20 inc shipping) and then downloading two firmwares from Amazon adds BT style speech interface for the Blind to a PW3.

It seems terribly badly designed. It's also pretty poor to use for listening to books like you can on the Kindle Keyboard or DXG (B008 and B009 or similar). I've all three so can compare.

The Text to Speech Accessibility free on Windows XP and later or current Linux works better and the actual reading is better.

I hear little improvement on the Text to Speech on the Kindle Keyboard on the packs added to the PW3, and I had DOS software as good in intonation and style in 1980s. It's poor on context.

I do use it to check how it pronounces made up names in stories. That doesn't just apply to SF&F. Dickens and other older writers made up names.

[salamanderjuice]

Amazon Echos can read Kindle books using TTS. Sounds a lot better than my Brother's old Kindle 2 at it too.

[binaryhermit]

I mean, I think Kindles pretty much got to the point where, much like smartphones, there wasn't that much room for innovation years ago.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by salamanderjuice

Amazon Echos can read Kindle books using TTS. Sounds a lot better than my Brother's old Kindle 2 at it too.

But those are spyware and need the Internet, really broadband to work.