GoKawiilKaitlyn Cimino / Android Authority
I wouldn’t be exaggerating if I said Amazon’s Kindle lineup has been fundamental to the e-reader category taking off. While there are many more alternatives now, in a variety of convenient sizes, Kindle still remains the default choice for many people. While familiarity is one reason, the other is the interface designed around your ebook library. However, with a slew of recent changes, Amazon appears to be pushing away readers, including some of the oldest backers.
Last year, Amazon strengthened its hold on ebooks, leading many users to jailbreak their Kindle readers. More recently, it announced plans to remotely kill Kindle devices sold until 2012. Effective May 20, older Kindles will lose access to the online bookstore, and users won’t be able to read anything other than the books already downloaded to their devices.
This would otherwise make sense for regular devices, but sounds outrageous for an ereader, which uses minimal resources and does not require a hardware bump every few years. My fourth-gen Kindle Paperwhite, bought in 2018, still works like it did the day I bought it, and I plan to keep it until it dies.
Naturally, many others are in the same boat. We recently asked our readers what they thought about Amazon’s move to effectively choke older devices. And the answers we received were obvious and expected.
Almost two-thirds of Android Authority readers who responded to the survey said they were frustrated with the change, while a mere 6% said they were fine with it. Another 20% of the readers said their Kindle devices, bought after 2012, were still not affected.
Most of the affected readers echoed a similar sentiment in their comments: most of them are unwilling to give Amazon a second chance after this move.
“This is just the final straw. Goodbye Amazon, hello reading books (bought anywhere but Amazon),” our reader, ianofroyston, commented. Meanwhile, another reader, notyalckram, noted how profoundly helpful Kindles have been: I used it to save carrying kgs of paper reports to meetings, instead just emailing the PDFs to my Kindle. Not sure what i will do now, but it won’t be a Kindle. Another reader, stewart.t.mccall, also speculates Amazon could make a similar move for the older Echo device. They wrote, “I expect to see Echo devices getting sunset, where they will cease working, and functionality will be limited enough to make people want to replace them.”
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