Amazon discontinuing support for older Kindles in May

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by DNSB

I have quite a few devices that are a lot older than the Kindle line. Heck, I recently booted up my old CP/M computer that I ran a BBS on for years when looking for an file for an acquaintance of mine—it's the only computer I have left that can read a 8" floppy disk. Since most old electronics are not worth selling, they tend to hang around—at least, mine do.

I used to help a friend run a BBS on a TRS-80 Model I. It was an interesting experience. The BBS was written in Basic. I had a program that was a pre-compiler. What it did was it made it so Basic could run the program, but did not need to do the interpreting as that was done beforehand. So the BBS ran faster.

I also had another friend that ran Fidonet. That's where I was able to get discounted modems. They were top of the line US Robotics modems.

I used to have a computer that was older then my Kindle Touch. It died End of June 2025. The power button wore out and the case was was too small to be able to get in and do anything to fix it. It was slow. So I replaced it with a Mini-PC that's much smaller and more useful and way faster.

The thing is, not all old hardware is too slow or unable enough to need to be replaced. The PW1 is a perfectly good example of hardware that's still able to be used and there is no reason for Amazon to drop support for it.

[odamizu]

Originally Posted by jhowell

I saw one piece of new information on Engadget (Amazon is cutting off support for older Kindles):

3% of what, I am curious. Is that of all Kindle users? Does that include those using the Kindle app on portable devices?

In any case that actually seems like a high number of customers with currently working devices to be cutting off!

NY Times is reporting:

Amazon says this will impact less than 3% of its Kindle e-reader and Kindle Fire customers worldwide. It’s unclear exactly how many Kindles are in the wild, but market research firm Market Growth Reports estimated that 72 million total Kindle devices had been sold as of 2024. So it’s safe to say that this move will brick a not-insignificant number of e-readers. [emphasis added]

It's still not 100% clear, but I'm kinda reading this as only including customers using Kindle eink readers and Fires, and not including people who don't own eink Kindles or Fires and only use Kindle apps on portable devices (i.e., iOS, Android, etc.).

[haertig]

Originally Posted by odamizu

...only including customers using Kindle eink readers and Fires, and not including people who don't own eink Kindles or Fires and only use Kindle apps on portable devices (i.e., iOS, Android, etc.).

There's not much of a case to be made for continued support of older apps. Because apps can easily be updated by the customer. There may be a few cases where an older app continues running on an ancient version of Android of iOS, but that ancient OS won't support a newer version of the app. This is actually a quite common occurrence, at least in the Android world. There are many times when newer versions of an app just stop supporting older versions of Android (I don't know about iOS personally). This has happened to me personally, several times.

There are also cases where an old app version is superior to newer versions - and in a few cases I maintain my older OS version devices with the older version of the app for this exact reason. This case fits Kindle-for-PC, or at least it did. The older version is superior, but probably only because you can use it for removing DRM, no other reason. So what Amazon did was make it so you can still run that old app (they can't stop that), but running it doesn't do anything useful for you (you can no longer download ebooks with it).

Sometimes apps die off and hit the unmaintained and unsupported stage. It's good if you have one of those installed on your old device so you can continue using it, should it no longer be available from the App Store. I have a couple of useful apps that fit this description. I think I still might have Kindle-for-PC installed on my Linux box - whether using Wine or in a Windows virtual machine, I don't remember. I don't remember because I never use it anymore. It is useless to fire it up, even though it still probably runs.

[tomsem]

I have always had too many Kindles and it will be a blessing to get rid of the 2 which I retain only for their magical DRM removal properties for those rare cases where Windows apps fail. They are really unpleasant to use.

I used to keep electronics for as long as they remained functional, but I have lightened up considerably, and have further still to go.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I also had another friend that ran Fidonet. That's where I was able to get discounted modems. They were top of the line US Robotics modems.

I got into Fidonet (1:153/290) after switching from my old CP/M system to running a dual line BBS with OS/2. Fidonet was an interesting experience especially when I started the Windows 95 forum which caused some people to worry about my personal choice of OS being OS/2. A couple of years as Zone 1 assistant co-ordinator was also a fun experience in learning to herd cats.

I used two USR Courier modems from their BBS program and then got into their beta program. That was more fun at first when the replacement PROMs arrived via snail mail but then USR updated both my Couriers when they switched to using EEPROMs so you downloaded the new firmware and rewrote the EEPROM. I can still bore the ears off most people talking about error correction, constellations, zero injection, etc.

And this is so far off topic, I'll need to borrow the James Webb to see the topic.

[odamizu]

Originally Posted by haertig

There's not much of a case to be made for continued support of older apps ...

My post was in response to jhowell's curiosity as to whether the 3% referred to all Kindle customers, including those who read exclusively on an app, or is it 3% of customers who read on Kindle devices.

As I said, the reporting is not 100% clear, but I'm taking it to mean 3% of customers who read on actual Kindle devices, not 3% of all Kindle customers.

[lkmiller]

There's support and then there is cutting off completely. 5th gen and older Kindles haven't actually been supported for years. 10th gen Paperwhites and Basic Kindles lose security updates at the end of this year. The Oasis 3 (10th gen) at the end of 2028. They already seem to have stopped getting feature updates. The only update anything in between has received was the recent change to DRM for those four models in the 7th to 9th gen on firmware 5.16.2.1.1. So to me it seems pretty clear what they really care about is closing the remaining workarounds for DRM removal.

[Regina]

Originally Posted by DNSB

I got into Fidonet (1:153/290) after switching from my old CP/M system to running a dual line BBS with OS/2. Fidonet was an interesting experience especially when I started the Windows 95 forum which caused some people to worry about my personal choice of OS being OS/2. A couple of years as Zone 1 assistant co-ordinator was also a fun experience in learning to herd cats.

I used two USR Courier modems from their BBS program and then got into their beta program. That was more fun at first when the replacement PROMs arrived via snail mail but then USR updated both my Couriers when they switched to using EEPROMs so you downloaded the new firmware and rewrote the EEPROM. I can still bore the ears off most people talking about error correction, constellations, zero injection, etc.

And this is so far off topic, I'll need to borrow the James Webb to see the topic.

When you read content which seems logical/reasonable but you dont have a damn clue of what is being discussed. Just a case of OHT (Over Head Transmission)

[Regina]

Originally Posted by lkmiller

There's support and then there is cutting off completely. 5th gen and older Kindles haven't actually been supported for years. 10th gen Paperwhites and Basic Kindles lose security updates at the end of this year. The Oasis 3 (10th gen) at the end of 2028. They already seem to have stopped getting feature updates. The only update anything in between has received was the recent change to DRM for those four models in the 7th to 9th gen on firmware 5.16.2.1.1. So to me it seems pretty clear what they really care about is closing the remaining workarounds for DRM removal.

Makes sense. Device features can be independent of device types. If file format changes, then comes the complexity of whether it would work with older software. Once file format is improved and Amazon wants to force the new file format, then there are 2 options:
1. Update software in older devices to support new format
2. Ditch the devices with old file format and exclude them.

Looks like Amazon is taking option 2

[Regina]

By killing all the devices that do not support their recent file format (KFX), Amazon is ensuring that older devices are not usable as a means to leak content.

This leads to lot of Kindle devices being non usable but Amazon would be happy to reap some money from the people who upgrade. sigh!

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by DNSB

I got into Fidonet (1:153/290) after switching from my old CP/M system to running a dual line BBS with OS/2. Fidonet was an interesting experience especially when I started the Windows 95 forum which caused some people to worry about my personal choice of OS being OS/2. A couple of years as Zone 1 assistant co-ordinator was also a fun experience in learning to herd cats.

I used two USR Courier modems from their BBS program and then got into their beta program. That was more fun at first when the replacement PROMs arrived via snail mail but then USR updated both my Couriers when they switched to using EEPROMs so you downloaded the new firmware and rewrote the EEPROM. I can still bore the ears off most people talking about error correction, constellations, zero injection, etc.

And this is so far off topic, I'll need to borrow the James Webb to see the topic.

I remember USR modems being able to handle the new standards with a firmware change because thy used a DSP to hand these things. Most other brands needed to be replaced to handle the new standards. Those were good times.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by lkmiller

There's support and then there is cutting off completely. 5th gen and older Kindles haven't actually been supported for years. 10th gen Paperwhites and Basic Kindles lose security updates at the end of this year. The Oasis 3 (10th gen) at the end of 2028. They already seem to have stopped getting feature updates. The only update anything in between has received was the recent change to DRM for those four models in the 7th to 9th gen on firmware 5.16.2.1.1. So to me it seems pretty clear what they really care about is closing the remaining workarounds for DRM removal.

Thing is, why cut off the PW5 (11th Gen) . It was only released October 27, 2021. I don't see why it cannot have another firmware release. Why leave it stuck on such a crappy firmware?

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Regina

Makes sense. Device features can be independent of device types. If file format changes, then comes the complexity of whether it would work with older software. Once file format is improved and Amazon wants to force the new file format, then there are 2 options:
1. Update software in older devices to support new format
2. Ditch the devices with old file format and exclude them.

Looks like Amazon is taking option 2

The thing is, possibly most of the eBooks Amazon sells came from an ePub format eBook. That got converted to Mobi & KF8. Then Amazon converted either the source format or KF8 to KFX. There is no such thing as a native KFX eBook. It's all converted format that these older Kindles can handle. So whatever the source format that then becomes KFX can also be used to convert to KF8 if KF8 is not the source format. Some KFX could have been Mobi if the eBook was made with that awful Kindle Create.

So really, there is no reason other then DRM to drop support for the older Kindles other then K1, K2, DX, and DXG. Amazon dropping Mobi makes sense. Amazon dropping KF8 makes no sense.

[Ebookus]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Thing is, why cut off the PW5 (10th Gen) . It was only released in November 2018. I don't see why it cannot have another firmware release. Why leave it stuck on such a crappy firmware?

Stop spreading misinformation, will you? the PW5 is 11th gen. then you complain why people call things by the wrong name

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by Ebookus

Stop spreading misinformation, will you? the PW5 is 11th gen. then you complain why people call things by the wrong name

And it was released in 2021, not 2018. The Paperwhite released in 2018 was the PW4.