Update: Well the Amazon Kindle Fire Tablet has been released. But so far it is only available for US purchases – boo! We have had no news from Amazon when or indeed if the tablet will arrive in the UK, but rumours so far are suggesting UK buyers will need to wait until 2012 if they want a true colour Kindle.
It seems that the gadgets use of cloud computing to do much of the processing of the web browser will mean a US company has some of your web history stored on its own servers. Whilst that might not be considered any kind of issue for most of us, it does go against some technical rules allowed by the EU concerning internet privacy. It will be interesting to see how Amazon get around this.
Back to our original article:
Sept 25th Newflash! Amazon are holding a press conference in New York on Wednesday 28th. This is something of a rarity and we expect the reason is that it has at last become time to unve
As can be seen in the comments on our Kindle 4 and Colour Kindle posts, colour is something that many Kindle owners would like. It is a very divisive issue though. Those that use their ebook readers simply as a great tool to read for pleasure often don’t see any need for a colour display at all. Others though, do see the benefits of being able to view reference material, magazines and like in full colour.
One thing a lot of people love about the current reader is its ability to make reading pleasurable, and completely unlike using a computer. So what would those same folks think of Amazon creating colour based on LCD? Well, we won’t have long to wait since it looks like the Colour Kindle release will be in October or November this year.
The possible snag is that this colour reader will in all likelihood actually be a Kindle tablet!
It looks like we’ll have to wait another year or so before e-ink in colour is good enough to be included in your favourite ebook reader (unless this new rumour is true of course!). My gut feeling is that people just won’t be impressed quite enough by subdued colours in e-ink to pay the extra. However, a future LCD/e-ink hybrid display certainly would grab people’s attention. We believe Amazon are working on it, but don’t count on anything quite that exciting arriving till 2012 or 2013.
For now, colour will come in the form of an Android based tablet – yeah I know, that means much shorter battery life and eye-strain. But this won’t be a device just for reading like the current generation (which if the rumours are true will hang around for a good while yet). Instead Amazon are banking on grabbing a whole new audience; those that want multi-functionality but aren’t willing to pay Apple’s huge prices for it. The tablet is likely to be branded as simply the Colour Amazon Kindle, and it will be priced accordingly, at around $250 (so about 155 quid which is a bit different to Apple’s prices!).
It may or may not be the Kindle in colour you hoped for, but it is coming soon!
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