But in today's ever changing environment one has to be on the move constantly & this creates a hurdle between books and their readers. To mention a few one can't always carry their collection of books whenever and wherever they move, sometimes the availability of a particular book that one wants to read is not available in their city, managing hard copies of books can be a tedious task for a few especially the working class & the most important one of the lot, books are getting thicker and expensive which puts some of the out of the reach of a few like students!
To tackle this intricate problem Amazon came up with an idea back in 2007 with a device called Kindle! Kindle by Amazon is basically the world's first dedicated eBook reader which lets one read novels, magazines, books etc probably everything that is in the form of text and images.
Kindle : A closer Look
At present we have four models of the Amazon Kindle in the market namely as Kindle 2016, Kindle Paperwhite, Kindle Voyage and the Kindle Oasis. Before I jump into their individual details I'd like to give you an overview of some of the key and common features that these devices share.
- They all are powered by a 1GHz Freescale i.MX6SL processor and come with 4GB of on board storage which is more than enough for storing thousands of books! The screen size is also 6" with varying resolution and PPI from model to model but the physical size is the same.
- My favorite is that the screen is glare free like real paper so not only is it eye friendly but also you can enjoy a read even under direct sunlight. Another noteworthy thing is that the screen doesn't feel like your conventional touch screen but is textured to give your fingers the feedback and feeling of touching physical paper rather than something artificial! All elders & kids at home are gonna love this for sure.
- New Kindles are equipped with free 3G connectivity to buy books, sync to the cloud and for everything else that is web based including sharing quotes, excerpts etc on social media websites. The free 3G offers are for lifetime and the carriers vary from country to country. In India we have Vodafone taking care of this department. Wi-Fi is also supported by a few models which comes in handy at times.
- All Kindles have access to the same Amazon store for books, too. However, unlike other eReaders, they're not setup to buy books from elsewhere, so all Kindle users can only buy books from Amazon. Thankfully, Amazon still has an excellent range of titles and very competitive pricing. If you're an Amazon Prime member, you can also access the Kindle Owners' Lending Library, which lets you borrow one book a month from a catalogue of 600,000 eBooks.
- Kindle supports many languages for its user interface plus for displaying text so one can download books in their native language if available and read them without any issue. As a bonus an on the go dictionary in your native language is always available to help you out with complex words.
- Every Kindles supports Amazon's Family Library as well, which lets you share your eBooks with other members of your household. Essentially, it lets you join two accounts together, so you can read each others books, plus you can add up to four child accounts to the pair of adults.
- All Kindles support syncing of your library between Mac, Windows, iOS and Android devices once you've installed the Kindle app for them. So your books go wherever you go no matter which device you have!
Current Gen Kindle devices at a glance!
Now coming to what is available and which one is the best for you. As mentioned earlier there are four models in the market at present loaded with various features and price tags so let's take a quick look at all of them.Kindle 2016
- Screen size: 6" Ink Pearl
- Screen resolution: 800x600 167PPI
- Storage: 4GB
- Dimensions: 160x115x9.1mm
- Weight: 161g
- Battery Life: 2-4 Weeks
Kindle Paperwhite
- Screen size: 6" E ink mono touchscreen
- Screen resolution: 1,448x1,072
- Storage: 4GB
- Size: 169x117x9.1mm
- Weight: 205g (3G: 217g)
- Battery Life: 3-6 Weeks
Kindle Voyage
- Screen size: 6" E ink touchscreen
- Screen resolution: 1,430x1,080
- Storage: 4GB
- Size: 162x115x7.6 mm
- Weight: 180g (3G: 188g)
- Battery Life: 3-6 Weeks
Kindle Oasis
- Screen size: 6" E ink touchscreen
- Screen resolution: 1,430x1,080
- Storage: 4GB
- Size: 143x122x3.3-8.5mm
- Weight: 131g (3G: 133g)
- Battery Life: 6-8 Weeks
What's the future of eBooks and Kindle?
Considering the success and ever growing demand of eBooks and audio books it won't be a surprise if we see a Kindle that can do more than just read books probably a Smartphone with the same textured screen but obviously more competitive along with the generic Smartphone features. This is pretty much evident since firstly people like multipurpose devices and can't stick to a single purpose device for long, secondly we might be looking at the next iPod which evolved into an iPhone/iPad and rest is history.A complete bezel less Kindle with front-rear camera is also a possibility as that'll make it a truly futuristic in hand slate for on the go notes, conferences and status reports. Yeah right just like those sci-fi flicks I know!
Either ways it's a win-win situation for us consumers as we'll be in for something new arriving in the market & more is always better. But one thing that I'm certain about is that nothing can replace the good old feel of a traditional book made out of ink and paper or the proud moment one has upon gazing at their collection of books on a book shelf symbolizing their taste & journey through the years.