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Amazon Kindle Oasis With 'Months' of Battery Life, Redesigned Body Launched

Posted by msmash on from the affinity-for-ebook-readers dept.

Amazon, on Wednesday, announced the Kindle Oasis, the company's latest addition to its ebook reader offering. The Kindle Oasis offers a range of improvements and changes over the Kindle Paperwhite. Mashable's Lance Ulanoff writes, "[The company has] essentially discarded the previous design in favor of a paper-thin display attached to a somewhat thicker side grip." Elaborating: First of all, the 6-inch screen is close to square. Second of all, it no longer sits in the center of the device. And thirdly, the screen is now an insane 3.4-mm thick. Yes, that is as thin as you think it is. Amazon's Oasis e-reader even marks the return of buttons to the design.As for the specifications, the Kindle Oasis sports a 6-inch display of 300ppi screen resolution, and 10 LEDs for "enhanced page consistency." Instead of "weeks"-long battery life, Amazon is promising "months" of usage on a single charge with Oasis thanks to the cover that ships with it and doubles as a rechargeable battery. It starts at $289.99 (Wi-Fi-only edition and with "advertisements that appear when you wake up the reader"), and goes all the way up to $379 (Wi-Fi + 3G, and no ads).

6 of 171 comments (clear)

  1. Excellent! by 110010001000 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Time to throw my old Paperwhite in the garbage! It is obsolete! I've had it an entire year! And it is only starting at $289 with ADVERTISEMENTS??? What a bargain! Thanks Jeff!

    1. Re:Excellent! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      No epub support means all Kindles are completely worthless crap.

    2. Re:Excellent! by The-Forge · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The full mobi format is documented officially so that kind of makes it not proprietary. It's like saying FAT is proprietary compared to ext3 just because Microsoft uses it.

  2. What a great feature by jewsdid911 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "Get special offers Love deals? You'll receive special offers and sponsored lockscreens directly on your Kindle. Offers display on the Kindle lockscreen and on the bottom of the home screen and library while not in use - they don't interrupt reading." Who the hell thinks getting advertisements is something desirable?

  3. Re:$300 to read books? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Nook Glowlight Plus is on sale for $99 right now. You get an e-ink tablet running Kit Kat that's rootable. It's not a powerhouse tablet with only 512MB ram, but it still makes an amazing customizable ereader.

  4. Limited storage by jbridges · · Score: 3, Insightful

    4GB again, just like cheap Kindles.

    A couple dozen cookbooks or graphics novels, and you are out of space.

    It's not waterproof, so why not put in a MicroSD slot?