According to “two people familiar with its plans”, Amazon will be introducing a thinner Kindle in August. It will have a sharper screen, but will still be gray scale and will not feature touch-control.
If true, it would seem that Amazon is doing the right thing by quietly improving on its simple e-reader with adding price-rising extras. After all, why bother with a color Kindle when you can buy an iPad and read Kindle titles on that? Instead, a slimmer Kindle with sharper text would further differentiate itself from bulkier tablets with shorter battery-life and lower-resolution screens that don’t work well outdoors.
The lack of touch, though, is a shame. When anyone who has used a modern smartphone picks up the Kindle for the first time, they touch the screen. Touch would also let the Kindle lose the ugly keyboard, which would in turn allow for either a bigger screen or a smaller case, either of which would be big improvements.
According to the Bloomberg article, there will be one further improvement. The page “turns” will be a lot quicker. At last.
