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Amazon's Kindle Voyage May Be Over (cnet.com)
Amazon's Kindle e-reader family seems to have lost a member along the way, with the disappearance of the Voyage from its Kindle Family listing. From a report: The site now lists just three models in its lineup of eight configurations, the Kindle, Kindle Paperwhite and Kindle Oasis. Good e-Reader first noticed this a few weeks back, saying the Voyage seems to have vanished in July. In years past when Amazon has refreshed its Kindle e-readers and Fire tablets, it has done it in the summer or fall. The high-end Oasis was last updated in October 2017, but the most recent midline Paperwhite last saw changes in 2015, and the basic Kindle in 2016. Chances are one or both of the older models will receive an update in the near future.
Since they started adding ads to the home screen (Even the one without special offers), these were no longer worth buying.
The millennial that doesn't like most of the stuff designed for millennials.
is truly beyond me. The so-called "copyright" isn't a right, the so-called "intellectual property" is not property.
These used to be contracts with a pretty narrow meaning - a few years of monopoly on the distribution of your work and all the money you can get for it, but IN EXCHANGE for making it available afterwards.
Today, the second part of the deal is gone, so there is absolutely no reason to stick to the first one, and especially to accept the sodomizer of the reader that the DRM is.
No amazon, no kindle, sorry.
I'd want an e-ink or split-screen e-ink/OLED laptop, frankly. It could be an e-reader and a general-purpose computing device. With the e-ink display, it could have absurd battery life (days to weeks).
But what is Amazon doing with its R&D team?
If you flag it as good enough and the product is done. Then your R&D team will either be fired or moved onto a different product all together. Risking having your product become outdated, and not having the resources to ramp up and catch up.
Just like phones last decade. Flip Phones, reached what a Flip Phone can do. Smart Phones were dominated by black berry, and each update to blackberry wasn't that big of a deal.
Apple iPhone concept put shock into these companies. Causing them 2 years to rework and revamp their product line, because there was minimal R&D because a phone was a phone, and all was done was change the style.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Making new Kindle Fires. Those are still selling, and being updated. Pure Kindle readers - eInk, monochrome - are dying. Why pay $79 for an eInk reader, when you can get a full-blown tablet for the same price?
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Battery life, the fact that e-ink is much better to read in the sun, etc, and sheer portability come to mind.
I realize millenials cannot go more than 2 minutes without obsessively refreshing their favorite social media site or looking at porn, but there is plenty of room for people who just want to read a book.
I can only imagine you've never used an e-ink ebook reader. You just cannot compare the experience of the paperwhite e-ink reader to a tablet, both for reading and living with it otherwise. Charging your kindle once a month and being able to read it outdoors as easily as a physical book, you just can't get that with a "full-blown tablet".
Squash
I agree. Once you have a decent e-ink device, you don't really need a new one. It's a product that lets you read every book ever written. Pretty hard to improve on that. The only growth is probably in large form factor devices for manuals and textbooks, which are too niche and too expensive for the average consumer.
Yup. The Kindle Paperwhite is a superior device. Read anywhere, never worry about battery life, and a pleasant & low distraction UI. Just barely pocket size. So it is easily carried without the display being too tiny. Ability to buy obscure books almost instantly if I see an interesting reference.
Amazon probably makes a lot more ebook sales on Kindle than anywhere else. I can't imagine buying an ebook to read on the laptop - I'll find a free copy somewhere. But that requires time & effort. If I can get a properly formatted version on the Kindle with near zero effort, and the price is right, they've got a sale.
Even tho it's just a fucking database entry saying I'm allowed to read the damned book.
Charging your kindle once a month and being able to read it outdoors as easily as a physical book, you just can't get that with a "full-blown tablet".
I don't imagine that I'm a typical user, but I do most of my reading indoors. The exception is when I'm using digital documentation for auto repair, but then I don't want to put my greasy fingers all over a PDA. I want to print out the pages I need, get them all greasy, and then recycle or discard them. Most people don't spend much time outside any more, and when they do, they're rarely reading. Consequently, the only functionality of e-Ink that's really relevant to most users is low power consumption. Most people are used to frequently charging devices now, though, so that's not much of a selling point.
There are cool things about e-Ink, but most people just don't care, and don't have a good reason to.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Well then, there's now an opening for you. You can make a paperwhite reader, load it with the FireOS (it's free) and then the Kindle app - and you can sell them to people who want an eInk based reader for their Kindle subscription!
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
I read on my Note 8. Big screen, plenty good for reading, and ALWAYS with me. Not so with a Kindle Fire, or laptop. Can read and listen to music any time I like. I bet that's the main consumption point for Kindle books, too - phones.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
They tend to be considerably lighter. More importantly they are far easier on the eyes than most tablets due to not having a backlight. The exception for me is oled which is superior to all other solutions when reading white text on black background in a dim room. So now I just read on my phone.
They tend to be considerably lighter. More importantly they are far easier on the eyes than most tablets due to not having a backlight.
I find that so long as I adjust the display brightness according to the ambient light, a TFT tablet is plenty easy on the eyes. Meanwhile, e-Ink either requires an external light, or has some oddly-colored backlight, and/or provides patchy illumination. TFTs have none of these problems. I used my e-Ink reader so little that two batteries died for lack of proper usage cycles.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I was shopping for a replacement for my long in the tooth and increasingly flaky Fire. I pretty much only used it for reading library books I checked out online. When I compared the feature set of Paperwhite versus Voyage it was truly difficult to come up with anything that made the Voyage worth the extra money. Screen resolution was the same, both had backlights for night reading, both were about the same size, both were about the same weight. Battery life was pretty similar. The Voyage had a bit of an edge on the storage side, but since I only ever store a couple books on the thing it's not a big deal. Finding a refurbished Paperwhite for short money sealed the deal in favor of the Paperwhite.
My only complaint with the Paperwhite is that there isn't a way to access the Overdrive/Libby system from the device itself. Other than that I really enjoy having a device without the ability to browse the web in any meaningful way with very long battery life. Some might say "well, a book can do that", but if it's outside my library's hours, it's hard to go pick one up!
and the abolition of roaming charges killed the voyage, because we don't need it anymore.
Kindle Voyage E-reader, 6" High-Resolution Display (300 ppi) with Adaptive Built-in Light, PagePress Sensors, Wi-Fi - Includes Special Offers:
https://www.amazon.com/Amazon-...
It's still for sale, right now, so... I have no idea what they're talking about. I guess this is like you go to a big box store, and you see they no longer have Campesso Beef with Barley Soup, and you go, OMG, THEY DON'T HAVE BEEF WITH... oh, wait, they just moved it to the end-cap between this aisle and the next. Never mind.
Maybe they are planning to phase them out, or maybe they just have lots more of the other models they'd rather sell, and so they want to steer people towards those other models. Just saying.
Our reign has gone on long enough. Indeed. Summon the meteors.
If you're speaking of the paperwhite having a backlight, it does not. The light is indeed a crappy temperature though.
Have you tried ONYX BOOX MAX 2 ?
Back in 2015 I purchased a Voyage and is still a trusted companion that gave me hours and hours of reading. I have it always close to me and I try to sneak in a read whenever I can.
If this news is indeed true, the sad part is the PagePress controls, which I love and are very useful to me; the Voyage is the only model to offer them. With its haptic feedback, it felt natural and speedy to me. I was certain it was a win, UX-wise, but looks like I was wrong.
Besides that, it was obvious that the Voyage would be a dud. The price was too high, Amazon did almost no rebates of the price, so the result was clear: it didn't sell.
It also shared almost all the shortcomings of other models in the Kindle lineup: poor battery life (with the possible exception of the Oasis), awful font choices (why invest $$ in an e-reader when you are going to read your books with an ugly, utilitarian font such as Bookerly with no better default options and no chance of supplying your own?), and lack of a case (again, save the Oasis).
I hope they soon lauch something with PagePress and with other drawbacks of the Kindle e-ink lineup removed.
-- Look to the Rose that blows about us--"Lo, Laughing," she says, "into the World I blow..."
From you comment it is so clear that you don't read a lot using a table.
The battery life is many times greater than a full color tablet and you can comfortably read when sitting in the sun. I have a kindle fire for indoor reading and there have been many times I will read to the point I need to recharge the battery in a single sessions (starting at 75% or greater charge). I have never come close to that in a single session with my paperwhite.
There isn't much point to the Kindle Voyage - it doesn't have enough advantage over the Paperwhite to justify the cost.
Simplifying the lineup makes sense - you have the basic device without a built-in light, a mid-range device with a built-in light, and a premium device with larger reading area extra features (e.g. bluetooth audio for audiobooks).
Because I have 0 use for a tablet, they're hard on the eyes, constantly need to be recharged, and provide oh so convenient avenues for privacy invasion. They also provide me no utility- the last time I decided to watch a movie when not at home was.... actually never. I'd go back to paper books before I got rid of my eink device. I'd buy an eink before I took a free tablet.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Kindle DX was an almost 10" screen. It seems there's no market for the textbook / letter / A4 sized e-reader, so they were back to novel-only sized units.
But I agree. Anyone I know that upgraded an e-reader only does so because the old one broke.
If you're speaking of the paperwhite having a backlight, it does not. The light is indeed a crappy temperature though.
I'm not overly familiar with a range of e-Ink products, I have ye olde nook simple touch. But I do know those which do have front-lights, and not backlights, because e-Ink. And they all seem to be trying to mimic the experience of reading underwater, sometimes in a swamp.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I love my kindle and have since day one, so not hating on them I love them, the headline for this however is misleading if you've never heard of the Voyage as the line is written to where it reads as though the kindle is over.
Performs pretty well... The new Note 8 screen is really good in bright sun. However, I tend to read only on flights and longer subway rides, so...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Once the second generation Oasis came out, there wasn't much point to the Voyage. (The first generation Oasis vs the Voyage was less clear because of the limited battery life of the bare Oasis without its battery pack cover.) Just about everybody will either pay the additional money for the clearly superior Oasis, or save some money and buy the Paperwhite.
Paperwhites, Voyages, etc. are edge-lit. Trust me, it's far easier on the eyes than even a top-notch backlit LCD display. It may be the first digital display that's even better than paper.
Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!
Paperwhites, Voyages, etc. are edge-lit.
It is my understanding that the entire class of devices uses a light wedge, so they are effectively front-lit. My problem is with the frequency of light used. I'm not happy with it.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"