Kindle 11th Gen: Rumours, Speculation, and Discussion

[binaryhermit]

I think hobnail was poking fun at good(sic)ereader's habit of making up stuff

[Quoth]

My sarcasm detector needed a fresh battery

[binaryhermit]

mine sometimes does too

[hobnail]

Originally Posted by binaryhermit

Is this source "good"?

And as far as I can tell, kindle++, whatever it is, is unlikely to need new HW to work?

It's a reasonably reliable source, but an even better one tells me that Amazon is going to sell the whole Kindle thing; books, devices, etc. to Barnes & Noble.

[Quoth]

After buying B & N via a shell company.

[J827372]

Originally Posted by binaryhermit

It does seem like the pace of innovation in eInk eReader hardware has significantly slowed. The last three big features in Kindle HW have been frontlight (in 2012), waterproof (2017) and whatever you want to call the Oasis 3's color-changing frontlight (2019).

I wonder what innovation people want to see that would be a significant improvement? The resolution is already very high, the lighting the Oasis can change temperature (it would be nice to have on the Paperwhite). Waterproofing. The changes you mention we're major upgrades that made the experience of using thr Kindle markedly better.

You could imagine modest improvements to screen contrast, body design, but nothing that would be such a huge leap that people who already have Kindles would upgrade.

Innovation and release cycles are slow because the technology is already very good. Even now, a new eReader isn't significantly better than one from a few years ago. Other than adding non-reading features (which most users presumably don’t need or want), doesn’t seem like a lot of new places to go.

[binaryhermit]

Exactly.

[SusanReads]

I'm one of those that just loves the new things, so I'm hoping they will just keep innovating. Even though the changes may be small.

A new design, some feature I hadn't thought I needed but so do, adjustable lighting (want a more blue tone, or yellow tone, dail it up yourself! I don't mean just the warmer light the Oasis has), better contrast. Anything really.

But I also realize that there won't be many people replacing their old e-readers when they are just fine.

Although I do think a Paperwhite with the warm light feature might come out soon. It just feels natural for Amazon to do so. And perhaps they improve some minor things as well? (The contrast on the PW4 is terrible, so I hope they improve that)

[binaryhermit]

Given that the frontlight took like 6.5 years to filter down from the Paperwhite to lower models (the Paperwhite was the high-end model when it came out in 2012) I'd say it's more likely than not to be several years before the Paperwhite gets the Oasis's color-adjustable frontlight.

I hope I'm wrong, for the record.

[NullNix]

Originally Posted by J827372

I wonder what innovation people want to see that would be a significant improvement? The resolution is already very high

Not really, not by paper standards. Even low-quality paper is equivalent to about 1200dpi: on high-quality glossy, you might need to exceed 8000dpi before you stop being able to see changes in font shape because of the paper absorbing the ink.

Reality is *high-res*.

(In particular, the Computer Modern fonts still look bad on Kindles, with ascenders and descenders vanishing, because they are far too low-res. They were designed for 1200dpi phototypesetters.)

We could probably do with a doubling or quadrupling of resolution in each direction, easily -- but of course that increases power draw, screen cost, etc etc etc.

[Paperbackstash]

Originally Posted by SusanReads

Although I do think a Paperwhite with the warm light feature might come out soon. It just feels natural for Amazon to do so. And perhaps they improve some minor things as well? (The contrast on the PW4 is terrible, so I hope they improve that)

I'm not sure when it will come out, but I do see that in the future. I have a bad feeling they may not improve the contrast back to PW3, but it's just a feeling. I do think we MAY get a color e-ink reader someday, but I think it will be when interest has already further declined in e-readers, and I don't think it will be that popular (just a hunch, they may never release it and just stick to tablets for the color features).

[John Hopper]

I would like a 7 or at least 6.8 inch screen Kindle but in a PW/Voyage form factor. Ideally with Voyage style page press buttons which I love, but I realise I'm in a minority, so let's say with buttons on either side.

Sent from my SM-N976B using Tapatalk

[ps67]

I wanted a 7.8" or 8" screen Kindle but there wasn't so I bought a Kobo. When they will produce it? I could buy it also if I already own a satisfying 7.8" Kobo Aura One.

Let's dream: a 8" and a 10.3" screen Kindle with Eink colour and, of course, warm light.

OK it is a dream, but they produced the Kindle DX, so why now there isn't anything larger than the 7" screen Oasis?

[hobnail]

Originally Posted by NullNix

Not really, not by paper standards. Even low-quality paper is equivalent to about 1200dpi: on high-quality glossy, you might need to exceed 8000dpi before you stop being able to see changes in font shape because of the paper absorbing the ink.

Reality is *high-res*.

(In particular, the Computer Modern fonts still look bad on Kindles, with ascenders and descenders vanishing, because they are far too low-res. They were designed for 1200dpi phototypesetters.)

We could probably do with a doubling or quadrupling of resolution in each direction, easily -- but of course that increases power draw, screen cost, etc etc etc.

Good point. In print I don't have a problem with serif fonts that have pointy terminals like Computer Modern, Georgia, etc. But on an ereader they drive me nuts so I stick with Caecilia and Bookerly.

[Quoth]

Re: DPI
Printing needs high DPI because it can't do a greyscale without dithering. Some Computer printers can compensate somewhat by using variable size dots.
Simplest paper printing is one shade of black. All shading is by dither patterns or variable dot size (halftone).
Simplest colour was C Y M. The blacks are muddy and fringe, so black is also used, CYMK. High Quality print can use maybe twenty colours or more, or six plus black on an inkjet.
Earlier eInk only did about two shades of grey as well as milky liquid (greyish white) or black (all the little black balls at the front). Current eink alleges 14 shades as well as "white" and black. Likely that's not completely accurate.

Anyway a 150 dpi LCD can look better than 600 dpi inkjet colour page and even in monochrome might look as good as 1200 dpi laser. High quality lithographic printing can indeed be a much higher dpi.
How is this possible?
It's the idea that you use intermediate shades to fill in the jagged appearance of a low resolution image. So with 150 dpi you can easily simulate 300 dpi or even 600 dpi pure black and white by using intermediate shades on the edges. Thus a 14 grey + black + white eink at 300 dpi can look as good as a 600 dpi laser print.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spatial_anti-aliasing

It turns out that for Roman text we are more sensitive to horizontal resolution that vertical. It's not true for Arabic, Chinese etc. Think how most serifs work.
So we can colour the edges to take advantage that most colour LCD used to be RGB sub pixels for each pixel. Using that and shading can make a 150 dpi LCD black text look nearly like 600 dpi to 1200 dpi laser print.
and mainly for text https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subpixel_rendering
Unfortunately many OLED and newer LCD screens are not 3 times as many subpixels horizontally, but twice vertically and horizontally:
R G
G B
Thus each full colour pixel uses two columns and two rows rather than the three columns per pixel. Some displays even add yellow subpixels.
If it's not a pure RGB or GRB or BGR or BRG set of three pixels per pixel, or a CRT, then the subpixel text enhancement needs to be disabled. Called Cleartype on Windows.

Regular eInk has no subpixels in the OLED / LCD sense, so it's only trick is to fill the jaggies with grey.
Also though print companies may want 300 dpi or better images, the real print resolution in colour or greyscale may be like a 150 dpi to 200 dpi true colour LCD image because they are using the 2000 dpi to 8000 dpi effective print resolution to dither and halftone.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dither#Applications
and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halftone

So we likely don't need 600 dpi or 1200 dpi ever on eink for text, just better rendering of the 14 inbetween shades and text display that uses them to anti-alias. Maybe 400 dpi and better font rendering. Actually looking with a magnifying glass on the 300 dpi Kobo, I see jaggies on diagonals and no evidence of greys.