I have three kindle keyboards and two kindle touches. All are about to become useless. Is the 20% per owned device such that I can have a new kindle of my choice at 100% discount? That would be fair. If not, I’m out. I’ll read ebooks on third party hardware.
Amazon rewards loyal Kindle devotees by closing the book on old e-readers
Amazon is rewarding long-time Kindle users by ditching support for aging devices, though it is trying to "minimize disruption" for existing customers by dangling a 20 percent discount for new models along with an eBook credit. As Reg readers know, nothing in tech lasts forever, and so from May 20, 2026, Amazon is " …
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Wednesday 8th April 2026 14:42 GMT Red Ted
Not a problem with my paper books
None of the paper books I own seem to have suffered from a discontinuation of support from their manufacturer, although a few have suffered from loss of support from their spine.
Nor do they try and show me adverts, track my location, or feedback to the publisher what other books I have been reading.
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Thursday 9th April 2026 12:31 GMT upsidedowncreature
Re: Not a problem with my paper books
I picked up a copy of Overtaken by Alexei Sayle at a charity bookstall. Got home and was surprised to see it's not only signed by the author, but I think the dedication is to Robert Harris (Enigma, Fatherland etc). It is quite the most aggressive and unhinged dedication I've ever seen but as it's from Alexei Sayle I'd be disappointed if it wasn't.
"To Robert, Better than fucking Pompeii & Enigma & Archangel, but I like Fatherland from [presumably Alexei's signature]"
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Thursday 9th April 2026 14:56 GMT MrBanana
Re: Not a problem with my paper books
I guess you don't use cookbooks. All of mine have hand written details of what went right, and wrong with the recipe. Notes for accompanying side dishes, and who & when I served it to dinner guests. It will also be splattered in evidence of being used. I had a well used copy of Heston Blumenthal at Home, and was later given a personally signed copy. I re-gifted the signed copy as my scuffed up, annotated original was worth a lot more to me.
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Wednesday 8th April 2026 14:59 GMT juice
Re: Not a problem with my paper books
Nor do any of my ebooks, which I read on my phone via a nice little app called AlReader.
And in an era where trains are crammed like sardines, and budget airlines constantly double down on the size of your luggage, it's nice to not have to deal with the extra weight and mass of a physical book!
And I can read in bed, with the background set to black and the brightness cranked down to about 5%; great for when I'm still wide awake while my partner's dreaming about being a tractor.
It's all horses for courses; I appreciate the advantages that physical books have, but ebooks have their own advantages too!
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Wednesday 8th April 2026 16:20 GMT AndrueC
Re: Not a problem with my paper books
The eInk screens are far superior though. I've tried reading on a PC and on my phone and it's just not as good (well reading on a phone was a total non-starter as the screen is too small).
I'll be annoyed if this kind of move ever affects me but the advantages of Kindle are just too great.
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Thursday 9th April 2026 22:52 GMT rosebody
Re: Not a problem with my paper books
There is european (Swiss) e-readers brand PocketBook which I think is pretty uknown to US users as I have read a number of discussions and never seen any americans mention them. I own one of their model, PB634 Verse Pro. Basically all models of PocketBook are Linux based. Pocketbooks are more or less comparable to kindles and - in some aspects - far better than them (f.e. number of natively supported text/ebook formats).
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Thursday 9th April 2026 11:14 GMT David Hicklin
Re: Not a problem with my paper books
I do have some Kindle books which I read on my truly ancient Sony android based tablet.
I do wonder when that will drop out of support has it has not had an update since 2015 for the kernel, no idea when the app was last updated but the about does have a software copyright notice of 2010-2026, so I guess it does update sometimes.
Also have a Kindle fire but that has sat unused for ages as I prefer the bigger Sony screen (about 10 inch) and it is not infested with Amazon advertising - plus the battery life is awful now.
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Thursday 9th April 2026 02:13 GMT Sleep deprived
Re: Not a problem with my paper books
Each summer, I go sea kayaking for near month-long stretches in remote areas. No need to plan for rest days, strong winds or rains bring them naturally. On those days spent in the tent, I rely on my shortwave radio and Kobo reader full of library books. It draws little power, seldom requiring a recharge from my solar panel and battery. Paper books would suffer from moisture and take too much (limited) space.
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Thursday 9th April 2026 11:07 GMT David Hicklin
Re: Not a problem with my paper books
> None of the paper books I own seem to have suffered from a discontinuation of support from their manufacturer, although a few have suffered from loss of support from their spine
They can make a good Christmas wish list item, last Christmas my daughter tracked down some decent 2nd hand copies for those of mine that had - literally - disintegrated from over reading!
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Thursday 9th April 2026 13:00 GMT DrXym
I remember buying a Barnes and Noble Nook during a US trip precisely so I could switch the firmware out. I recall at the time it was using a version of Android so it didn't take much to unlock it. At one point was able to run Opera browser and even run Angry Birds on it.
Unfortunately it didn't have a long life. Within about 12 months it started randomly crashing. I don't know if unlocking it was the cause, but I suspect the RAM was fried. I recently took receipt of a very old Kindle which I might try and root.
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Thursday 9th April 2026 10:47 GMT Kerfufflinator
Generally agreed, but for people who self-publish, I do like actually paying for the books. Of course, Amazon takes a cut, but most of that money still goes to the author, not some publisher. Most of these authors do have some online presence though, so there are other ways I can pay them. But this is very much like buying stuff from bands you like on bandcamp, instead of just listening to them on Spotify, especially if they are small local bands.
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Friday 10th April 2026 11:40 GMT Jellied Eel
Re: Most of the money goes to the author?
If your doing print-on-demand (which "self-publish" from Heyrick strongly implies) rather than investing ¤1000s in a print run, then a physical book costing $10 or less on Amazon will result in small change for the author per sale.
There's also FUN! with Kindle Unlimited-
https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/G201541130
You'll get one royalty payment for Kindle Unlimited (KU). We’ll pay according to the same payment schedule and payment method you selected for your other KDP sales. We review the size of the KDP Select Global Fund each month to make it compelling for authors to enroll their Kindle eBooks in KDP Select. We announce the fund monthly in our community forum. The share of fund allocated to each country varies based on a number of factors, such as exchange rates, customer reading behavior, and local subscription pricing. Author earnings are then determined by their share of total pages read. They are able to earn a maximum of 3,000 Kindle Edition Normalized Pages(KENPC) read per title per customer.
Which perhaps isn't as compelling as Amazon thinks it is. They promote Unlimited, but the payouts are very much limited and pretty much outside the author (or publishers) control. Especially when they don't make it easy to publish in multiple countries, even though the slush fund is carved up by country. It's kinda fun seeing how many pages get read though. Also one of the reasons why there's a lot of AI slop on Kindle Unlimited, with people trying to game the KENPC payments.
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Wednesday 8th April 2026 14:09 GMT doublelayer
To clarify, it's the remote Kindle store books you won't be able to download new ones, and if you reset the devices, you won't be able to download the old ones. The devices will still read things you copy onto them directly, so they can still be used in some ways. They don't require registration for that part, so you can reset them safely and still read files. Not that it makes Amazon's decision better, but the devices may be of more use than you expected.
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Thursday 9th April 2026 14:19 GMT LybsterRoy
I use a Bookeen, since they support folder organisation, (shame they went bust) but I haven't suffered at all from no upgrades for quite a few years. I can still read books. Never downloaded anything from their book store since it was in French and I'm monoglot English. I'd be interested to know what the upgrades were on the Kindle and how they enhanced your reading experience.
In common with other posters I haven't found the non-upgraded 2000 ish physical paper books I still own to be unreadable due to the lack of an upgrade.
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Thursday 9th April 2026 15:23 GMT Anonymous Coward
>In common with other posters I haven't found the non-upgraded 2000 ish physical paper books I still own to be unreadable due to the lack of an upgrade.
TBF, we've found that many of our physical books are unreadable due to a physical downgrade - our eyesight is no longer good enough to read the small print in many of them.
eReaders are much better for the visually impaired.
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Wednesday 8th April 2026 14:52 GMT juice
> All are about to become useless
Did you actually read the article?
As Reg readers know, nothing in tech lasts forever, and so from May 20, 2026, Amazon is "discontinuing support for Kindle devices released in 2012 or earlier," the company states in an email to customers today.
Affected hardware includes first and second-generation Kindle versions, as well as Kindle DX and DX Graphite, Kindle Keyboard, Kindle 4, Kindle Touch, Kindle 5 and Kindle Paperwhite 1st generation.
What does this mean for those customers? They can continue to read books already downloaded on these devices but won't be able to "purchase, borrow, or download additional books on them after that date," the email says.
"If you deregister or factory reset these devices, you will not be able to re-register or use these devices in any way."
So you can still use your devices, and you can even still sideload your own files onto them. You just can't download anything new onto them.
Which is a bit of a pain - and the potential bricking of the devices if you attempt to reset them at least as bothersome.
But it doesn't mean that they're instantly going to become useless, come May 20th.
Then too, Amazon has supported these devices for 14 years. And that's actually a pretty decent timespan in which to support a device.
It's certainly longer than that offered by Google (max seven years), Samsung (max seven years) or Apple (5-6 years of iOS upgrades, 7-8 for security patches) for their devices.
It's even better than the support Microsoft offered for Windows 10, their "OS to end all OSs"; support for that stopped after 10 years, with Microsoft grudgingly adding a year's extension when it turned out that people weren't that bothered about upgrading to Windows 11.
And I certainly can't think of any other commodity hardware which has anywhere near the same length of support. For instance, good luck upgrading the OS on a TV of that age!
TBH, I'd guess that this is more about the servers which talk to the Kindles, rather than the Kindles themselves; the cost of maintaining/upgrading/securing these is probably far in excess of any revenue that they'll be earning from the few people still clinging onto 14-year old hardware.
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Wednesday 8th April 2026 15:12 GMT Anonymous Coward
It's not about "support"
The core function of a Kindle device (i.e. the reason for purchasing it) is to download and read Kindle purchases in a convenient format. If users could choose to continue using their old Kindle but without updates, then there would not really be an issue. But this core function is being terminated for older devices.
Windows 10 users can continue to use Windows 10 but without security updates, if they choose and/or are allowed to. If Microsoft took the same approach as Amazon, then you would be able to read files previously saved on your Windows 10 PC, but not edit anything or add new ones when "support" ended.
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Wednesday 8th April 2026 17:20 GMT juice
Re: It's not about "support"
> If users could choose to continue using their old Kindle but without updates, then there would not really be an issue
As the article explicitly states: you can continue to use your old Kindle. You just can't download new files from Amazon.
And in an era where the use of LLMs has vastly increased the number of potential exploits, do you really want to be connecting an obsolete devlce to the internet? Especially when said device can be used to purchase things off Amazon?
> Windows 10 users can continue to use Windows 10 but without security updates
So what you're saying is that you can still use Windows 10, but can't download security updates from Microsoft?
Isn't that pretty much the same as continuing to be able to use your Kindle, but can't download new files from Amazon?
Either way, it's the same fundamental issue: the hardware isn't magically bricking itself; instead, the servers which they talk to are being switched off.
Because it costs money to maintain those servers, and to keep them patched and secure. And at the same time, since these devices aren't being made any more, the userbase is only ever dwindling, so the revenues are dropping.
So it's inevitable that at some point, costs will exceed revenues, and things will have to be shut down.
There's certainly lots of things which Amazon can be bashed for, but in this instance, they've given the Kindle over 14 years of support, which far exceeds the support level for any other commodity hardware that I can think of.
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Thursday 9th April 2026 09:09 GMT Filippo
Re: It's not about "support"
>So what you're saying is that you can still use Windows 10, but can't download security updates from Microsoft? Isn't that pretty much the same as continuing to be able to use your Kindle, but can't download new files from Amazon?
No, it's not. The same would be that the Kindle keeps working but can't download security updates. That's literally what "the same" means.
"The same" as "unsupported Kindle can't download new files" would be "unsupported Windows machine can't download new files". Which would be obviously outrageous and a no-go even for Microsoft.
>There's certainly lots of things which Amazon can be bashed for, but in this instance, they've given the Kindle over 14 years of support,
No, they haven't. "Getting support" does not mean "graciously allow to keep functioning", otherwise Windows 3.11 would still be "getting support".
If you want to compare Kindle devices to Windows machines, you need to use the same definitions for both. If "Getting support" means "can still be used", then Amazon is proving itself far worse than Microsoft by deliberately crippling key functionality. If "Getting support" means "receiving regular updates", then Amazon is still doing worse than Microsoft, since Kindle devices stop getting updates far sooner than Windows versions. The only way you can claim that Amazon is better than Microsoft is via an egregious double-standard.
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Thursday 9th April 2026 18:58 GMT doublelayer
Re: It's not about "support"
This analogy does not work well because there is no direct comparison, no matter how much anyone tries to squash something into that hole. Amazon's cutting off all remote functions, including the ability to download already purchased material to the device. That's more severe than cutting off updates. Amazon is not making the devices stop working entirely; users can still copy book files to the devices and read them in the same way. That's less severe than preventing any new files from being opened on a computer. If we did try to match definitions, it might be something like the ability to download optional components from Microsoft's servers, in which case Microsoft does provide that much longer than Amazon is doing, but even that isn't a logical comparison because the books that Amazon's cutting off access to were a bigger part of the workflow of most but not all Kindle users than optional components are to Windows users.
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Thursday 9th April 2026 12:54 GMT DJO
It's not about the cost of allowing the devices to continue, indeed that would be effectively zero. It's about people using devices that do not generate ongoing revenue which is (from their perspective) the worst possible scenario imaginable.
<smug mode>This is why I avoided Kindles from the start. At least Kobos allow you to load any old epub crap from any source no matter how dubious</smug mode>
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Wednesday 8th April 2026 21:54 GMT CountCadaver
pedal bike would be a good comparison - can still find parts for bikes sold decades back and some boutique companies will still service and supply parts for bikes they sold 50+ years ago, ditto high end fountain pens where their makers will take back, clean, service and even replate barrels on pens old enough to be my grandfather (and he's over 90)
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Wednesday 8th April 2026 13:38 GMT ThoughtCrime
Re: Obviously bollocks
Technically, no they can't support older hardware with the latest software. Because the latest software was built without the support!
But, I get it. Even Linux, where all the distros pride themselves on supporting old hardware, is removing kernel support for Intel 486 CPUs. There comes a time when it's not worth it. But the answer then is to keep the OLD software, that DOES support the old hardware, available.
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Wednesday 8th April 2026 16:08 GMT Doctor Syntax
Re: Obviously bollocks
Even if you have an old Linux computer with old S/W on it you can still use it to do whatever you used it for before, including reading or downloading new files from online. It's not bricked. The functionality remains. The situation with Kindle is that if you reset it you brick it.
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Wednesday 8th April 2026 17:22 GMT doublelayer
Re: Obviously bollocks
Their statement does sound like that, but no, you don't brick it by resetting. If you reset it, you can't log in and download the books you bought from them on that device, even those that would be on the device now, but the reading function on files you copy to it does continue working because that doesn't require registration.
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Wednesday 8th April 2026 17:47 GMT Annihilator
Re: Obviously bollocks
The failure of that analogy is that Linus didn’t build and sell the 486 chips in the first place, or have access to stats that demonstrate many of his paying customers still use it.
I’m guessing that Amazon didn’t sell them with a “oh by the way these will stop working eventually…” warning. Probably quite the opposite.
I also doubt there is any new feature available for a Kindle that would stop it from being able to download and store new books. It’s a glorified EPUB reader.
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Thursday 9th April 2026 09:26 GMT Roland6
Re: Obviously bollocks
I suspect the real reasons are as people here have alluded to: the old Kindle Whispernet interface doesn’t support the “rich” functionality now “required”, namely: serving of ad’s, collection and upload of telemetry ie. All the stuff that enables Amazon to monetise their customers.
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Thursday 9th April 2026 07:42 GMT James Henstridge
Re: So what has changed ?
I suspect they've changed the protocol many times, with old Kindles using whatever version was current when software support was cut off. Presumably they want to turn off the oldest versions of the protocol in the backend servers.
Another possibility is that they see the devices as vectors for DRM stripping. They send different versions of books to different devices, with weaker DRM on old devices that don't support the newer DRM. Cutting off old devices would prevent this method. This seems less likely though, since there are other devices with broken DRM that they aren't turning off in this wave.
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Wednesday 8th April 2026 14:54 GMT TVU
I use my older Andoid tablet with ebooks.com plus local library service apps and they all still work fine.
In these days of supposed environmental awareness, Bezos & Amazon should not be instantly turning working Kindle ebook readers and tablets into instant trash and that is an environmentally irresponsible thing to do.
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Wednesday 8th April 2026 16:03 GMT lordminty
I bought a £30 Nook too.
Brilliant device and was the best ereader of its era. Better than either a Kobo, which runs a close second (I've got one if those too) and the dreadful Kindle Touch (my wife has one of those).
I've simply no idea how the Kindle got to own the market, as they were technically a very much inferior product.
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Wednesday 8th April 2026 13:44 GMT Chris Gray 1
No contact (yet!)
Kindle Keyboard owner here - mine still works fine, and the battery still last weeks. I've had no contact from Amazon about it becoming unusable. And, I sign on to Amazon.ca fairly regularly, at least when waiting for a shipment. I'm *not* an Amazon Prime member, and I always choose the cheapest shipping method. Still messing around moving over to a new "mini" computer I got from them. Typing on a wireless keyboard/mouse combo (Logitech) which is my latest order from them.
Comments don't indicate that anyone has actually received a notification from Amazon. Has anyone on here? Email?
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Wednesday 8th April 2026 15:20 GMT Jellied Eel
Re: No contact (yet!)
Comments don't indicate that anyone has actually received a notification from Amazon. Has anyone on here? Email?
Nope, not yet. But good timing* given the battery life on my trusty old one is now 2 days, if I'm lucky.
*Although conspiracy mode might suggest the battery life shrunk with a software 'update', so wondered if that was a cunning plan to force hardware updates. Says a lot about trust in big tech when we stop believing in coincidences.
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Wednesday 8th April 2026 15:07 GMT Alan Mackenzie
"Unprotected" content
DRM doesn't protect content. The said content was never in any danger in the first place. What it does is _restrict_ the use of content.
What you meant, I think, was that the content can be extracted free from restriction. Which is only reasonable, considering you bought it.
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Thursday 9th April 2026 01:41 GMT Eric 9001
Re: "Unprotected" content
You need to be careful with the usage of the "DRM" term, making sure to point out it is Digital Restrictions Management every time (as there is corporate propaganda which claims it's about "Rights").
Content refers to merely the state of being satisfied, or the inside of something (i.e. the contents of this vase) - it's clearly very insulting to the author of a good book to refer to its quality story or quality information as merely being readable.
You can't actually buy copies of books from amazon - if you look at the sale terms, all that can be purchased is a; "license to read the book" (sometimes it's a license to only read the book once).
On old devices, it is rather possible to copy the books off in the proprietary format and then convert the books to a free format that is free from restrictions.
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Wednesday 8th April 2026 14:00 GMT AJ MacLeod
Do yourself a favour
and take this opportunity to get out of the awful Kindle prison. Buy a decent e-reader which doesn't require any on-line setup (Pocketbook for one, Kobo?), buy your e-books from wherever you like and manage them with whatever software you find best.
E-readers in general are extremely long-lived for tech items, it's insanity to be at the "mercy" of any corporation regarding your continued use of your own property.
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Thursday 9th April 2026 01:12 GMT Bebu sa Ware
Re: Do yourself a favour - Buy a decent e-reader
Kobo for a start.
I have two kobo touch readers that I bought years ago which still work and get updates. One update near the beginning of the year screwed which I initially assumed was Kobo "decommissioning" the device à la mode Bezos but just a cockup. You can download and install a later update via usb from a PC/Mac/etc.
The kobo devices are pretty hackable … basically just an embedded Linux - I had the internal SD card fail in one but wasn't too difficult to download the image transfer it to a (larger) sd card and replace the failed one. The average PC or phone repair place could do it for the techno·challenged polloi.
Since my reading is pretty much exclusively PD - Gutenburg, Faded Page, Standard Ebooks and Annas Archive - I have always used Calibre convert kobo epub and transfer to the device so I suppose I would not notice kobo dropping support.
The only complaint is that viewing PDFs, even on the later Aura One, is painful but I imagine that is a limitation of the screen size combined with the PDF format.
I was looking at the 10"+ Onyx Boox readers a few years ago but at that time were in the high end tablet price range and after retiring I rarely need to read PDFs.
I still prefer paper books but the space they require is a major downside and having moved house four times in as many years this disadvantage was emphasized. Anyone else catch themselves attempting to turn the page of a paper book by tapping the margin of the page ? ;)
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Thursday 9th April 2026 14:23 GMT DJO
Re: Do yourself a favour - Buy a decent e-reader
PDFs are the emissions of Satan's backside and that's being nice about them. There are free online services that'll convert PDFs into something sensible as long as the PDF in question isn't corrupted or stuffed full of malware.
I use this one:
https://cloudconvert.com/pdf-to-epub
I've no idea if there are better ones, there probably are, but it generally works for me.
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Wednesday 8th April 2026 14:08 GMT Synonymous Award
Yes but...
What about being able to email our own .epub files to our aged devices? That's how I've been getting content to my beloved Kindle for some time now. Really good side-load for content that can be blagged from various low-cost options.
(I suspect I can predict the answer to my own question....)
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Wednesday 8th April 2026 14:36 GMT AlanSh
I hope the Voyage isn't included
I have a Kindle Voyage. The ONLY reason I have it is that it is the latest model that supports the Amazon Origami case - which I really like (the chinese copies are rubbish). I've ven bought spare Voyages which come with those cases (so I have 3 spare Voyages).
If I have to give up my Voyage, I will NOT be happy.
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Wednesday 8th April 2026 16:12 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Alaternative O/S on a kindle?
Yup the older Kindles can be jailbroken and KOReader installed. Great bit of software, supports ePub and can sync over WiFi.
You do need to sideload (over WiFi) non-DRM books that you source ahem, elsewhere.
That said, Kindles 2013 have lower DPI screens. Upgrading does get you a nicer screen. I bought a Kobo Clara BW and its a great eReader.
You do not even have to jailbreak Kobos to install KOReader.
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Thursday 9th April 2026 00:30 GMT Tron
re: we're THIS close to having fridges that 'expire'.
A good mechanic can refurb cars from half a century ago without complex tech and can often find parts to take them back to showroom quality.
What will happen to modern, tech heavy ones when a manufacturer goes TU and the servers get turned off, or perhaps they decide the user base is no longer worth it. That will be a very big, very expensive paperweight in your drive. And confidence in the market will take a pounding. Tech is less resilient and makes anything dependent upon it less resilient.
Plus I got an 18thC book in the post this morning. Still perfectly readable. No updates required.
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Wednesday 8th April 2026 16:23 GMT SKinTN
Glad I Decided Against Kindle
About 8 years ago, I decided to buy another ereader. I had owned a Kindle, one of the early editions, but despised Amazon's desire to control how I purchased and loaded books on them. This time, Kindle wasn't even a consideration. I bought a Likebook Mars after a lot of research, because it had an expandable memory card, so I could stuff it to my heart's content.
It was a bit tricky to get it set up, but it's worked without a hitch during those 8 years. Best of all, I don't need the internet to use it, so I don't need to worry about software updates or whether it's supported or not.
I'm considering looking for a larger ereader -- but will continue to choose anything other than Kindle. They're just way too invested in making it inconvenient to get content that they can't touch.
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Thursday 9th April 2026 17:50 GMT nlaslett
Re: Glad I Decided Against Kindle
Amazon doesn't control how you purchase or load books on a Kindle. You're free to buy books from other sources and load them on the Kindle. I do that all the time. They just control what and how you load books from the Amazon store and what you can do with them (DRM). There are great free tools for managing non-Amazon books on a Kindle.
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Wednesday 8th April 2026 17:42 GMT Someone Else
This is...
...not going to go over well with my 96-year-old Mom, who suffers from macular degeneration and is only capable of reading books (which she dearly loves to do) on a Kindle...with the text blown up just about as big as it gets. And who is on a fixed income.
Others in this forum have speculated that the real reason that this is going on is that there is a new encryption algorithm that the older devices (allegedly) can't be made to decrypt. That sounds rather bullshit to me, but if it is indeed the case, then I would suspect that a 20% discount on the new super-duper Kindle devices will result in an overall cost greater than the original price of the device that it is replacing (in 2026 dollars/euros/pounds/kroner/etc.)
And if it is not the case (likley), then this is YAN money grab by someone who certainly doesn't need to be grabbing.
So, just more Tech, Bullshit, and Greed. The 21st century's current Unholy Trinity.
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Wednesday 8th April 2026 19:14 GMT ComicalEngineer
I have a kindle - it's useful because it can be read in direct sunlight. It's also small and light enough to fit in my jacket pocket.
Mine is slightly newer than the versions being borked.
My daughter, however, has been informed that her version is no longer supported. She just wants a simple book reader, nothing sophisticated. Amazon have no made a cheaper version whci is full of adware (£75) or an ad-free version for £175).
Taking the piss.
Screw you Bezos
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Wednesday 8th April 2026 19:20 GMT martinusher
Even a modern Kindle has problems
I thought the Kindle was a great idea when it first came out. Its wasn't that it was an 'e-reader' -- the technology needed to display books is trivial -- but the e-ink display that was really easy on the eyes and the ultra-low battery consumption made it a viable alternative to paper. It did have some drawbacks, some which haven't been resolved. Older Klindles choked on large books, for example, and its never been particularly good at displaying 'foreign' content. I've had a lot of problems with PDF files, for example. They may or may not display, something that's particularly annoying since everything works on a typical tablet or computer. (One document glitch with a modern Colorsoft is that it only displays even pages of a book -- the odd ones are blanked out.) This is one reason why I don't use it as much as I'd like, in fact I only use it for older books (Kindle editions of new books cost almost the same as the dead tree versions which makes them a particularly bad deal.)
This announcement from Amazon is particularly annoying because I really don't like being treated like an idiot by vendors. I know what's in a Kindle. I know that an EPUB should read on it regardless so any change has to be merely commercial, probably changing the DRM. Bricking functional devices is inexcusable -- if you don't support it then leave it be because an alienated customer base isn't going to buy any further products from you (ask Sonos....).
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Wednesday 8th April 2026 21:32 GMT billdehaan
Kindles are the Windows of e-readers
In other words, they are the default that everyone knows about. And like Windows, there are lots of alternatives, many of which may be better, that most nontechnical people have ever heard of.
In Canada, Kobo is probably just as well known, since it's a Canadian company (well, an English language subsidiary of a Japanese company), it's partnered with bookstores, Canadian libraries support it, and it's sold in most of the box stores here. So it's very visible. But even here, 99% of the public would have no idea that there are other e-readers besides Kindle and Kobo.
I got a Kobo Glo sometime around 2014, but I don't think I ever finished a single book on it. It's slow, it's small, and, it's low resolution, which for my eyesight, made it a show stopper.
In 2024, I was given a data dump of PDF files to process, I hated the glare of my tablet, so I looked up large screen e-readers, and discovered that there are tons of options now - reMarkable, Boox, Pocketbook, BigMe, Meebook, and more. There's a good list here.
I bought a 9'7" Pocketbook Lite (recommended) and I've been happy with it. By chance, three months later, I got an award of a 10.2" Kindle Scribe. In a side by side comparison, the Scribe is definitely faster and has a much higher resolution screen. Of course, it's almost twice the price. But in every other way, I found the Pocketbook to be a better device. I can read PDFs and ePubs, and something like 20 other formats (including Microsoft Word), where Kindle only reads PDFs and Mobi files. Pocketbook works directly with Calibre, where the Kindle sort of works, and doesn't support ePub format. And their official process for copying books to it is to mail it to an Amazon email address.
But the major hassle with the Kindle is the invasion of privacy. Like Windows, Amazon tracks everything you do on a Kindle. They've deleted books remoted from people's Kindles (ironically, the book 1984, which you have to admit, is perfectly on brand.
I couldn't configure my Kindle Scribe without an Amazon account, and having it connect to the mothership to register itself. In contrast, I've never even defined any wifi credentials in my Pocketbook. It's fully offline, and private.
And most importantly, it's not dependent in any way on Pocketbook. The company could shut down and my e-reader wouldn't be affected.
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Thursday 9th April 2026 05:23 GMT Neil Barnes
Re: Kindles are the Windows of e-readers
Oddly, when I recently replaced a Kobo with a broken screen (I mean, the screen was broken, not that I replace it with... oh, you know) I found it extremely difficult to find a new one here in Germany - nobody offered it. In neighbouring countries, no problem, though many dealers didn't list Germany in their list of destinations. Eventually I got one in the UK the next time I visited. But I'm curious as to why...
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Friday 10th April 2026 08:23 GMT Clarecats
Re: Kindles are the Windows of e-readers
The original Sony e-reader was bricked in UK and Ireland without explanation except that the market share wasn't big enough. Mainly, younger people had bought it, one of whom showed it to me, and it was quite a heavy brick. This resulted in nobody much wanting a Kobo or other e-reader that seemed to have a marginal share of the market.
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-28663878
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Thursday 9th April 2026 15:31 GMT DJO
Re: nothing in tech lasts forever
And of course swatting a fly with a 2kg book just leaves another stain on the cover instead of a broken device.
Alternatively it's tricky to update books, especially dictionaries where new words are added to the language and usage can (and does) change over time.
Really the best bet is a combination of both, nice rows of books on the shelves and for reference works, easily updated and searched copies in an e-ink device.
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Thursday 9th April 2026 00:25 GMT Michael Hoffmann
Unsurprisingly a lot of snark about real books not suffering from this problem.
Until you look at some of them and see what the use of acidic paper has wrought. A lot of my old faves are now yellowed and browned and I worry if the paper will finally just crack.
We should never have stopped using papyrus, vellum, clay and stone!
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Friday 10th April 2026 11:25 GMT Jellied Eel
Sadly, a lot of older books collected nicotine and tar just by sitting on the shelf, and are potentially slightly toxic to handle, as the toxins can be absorbed through the skin. Smokers harmed everything around them.
It's fine, unless you're an insect. Or possibly a vegetarian given the nicotine content of potatoes, tomatoes and the naturally highly toxic aubergine/eggplant.* But this is also one of those bits of FUN! given the trend for roasting veg. Especially now we're getting into bbq season. On the plus side, nicotine+UV= niacin, aka vitamin B3, although I'm not suggesting eating books, or licking sunbathing smokers as an alternative to a well-balanced diet. Or keeping books exposed to sunlight. But anti-smokers may also want to cut down on those veg because they'll also contain the deadly Polonium-210, by virtue of that being present in both tobacco and veg from soil or fertilisers.
But biggest advantages of e-books are a) they make me some money! and b) they take up a lot less space. So I have nearly 1,000 books on my Kindle and occasionally muse about how many linear feet of shelf space they'd take up, if I had the traditional versions. Then again, having looked at houses, it suprises me the number that are marketed as having 'libraries' don't have shelves, only a few unread art books tastefully displayed. There are of course downsides**, like enforced obsolescence, or the way they can be quietly censored by pushing updates.
*Nobody likes eggplant! Especially me..
**Which reminds me. I really need to get a Terry Pratchett collection again. Part of the fun of those for me was the bootnotes, which aren't as convenient to see in e-book versions.
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Thursday 9th April 2026 01:10 GMT AhStewie
Well the real bottom line is
Amazon needs sales and their e-reader's have turned out to be too reliable and people are not replacing them so they are taking a product that still works fine and making it unusable for the customers who still own them. The 20% off and a free book is not really going to make up for the fact that they are going to have to purchase a new e-reader, $110 to $250, so that's only $25 for the low end and $50 off the upper end devices. Still $85 to $200 outlay with a free book - heck I think they include a free book when you register a kindle still?
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Thursday 9th April 2026 02:17 GMT steviator
Tech companies love consigning old devices to the landfill.
Maybe when manufacturers or software vendors decide to end support for certain classes of hardware, they should be responsible for making sure those devices don't end up anywhere except at a recycling plant.
Some simple criminal charges with mandatory jail time for irresponsible CEOs would clear things up.
In cases where the device has a single purpose to connect to a service, the provider should have to replace the means of access or refund their customers for them as well.
All companies should have to take responsibility for all the waste they create and take it all back when customers have finished with it.
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Thursday 9th April 2026 05:40 GMT drankinatty
Don't worry, the old Kindles will all go "away"
Yes, you know "away", as in "thrown away", where "away" usually means illegally shipped to southeast Asia for recoverable parts and metals to be stripped from the boards and the remainder disposed of, either locally, or shipped to Africa, by being dumped into the sea. You know, "Away".
If instead Amazon had to recover and reclaim all the plastic and electronic waste it created, I suspect its willingness to support older devices would dramatically change, overnight. Yes, there is a role for sane regulation to play. Without any cost, forced obsolescence is the business model for the foreseeable future.
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Thursday 9th April 2026 05:59 GMT KimJongDeux
Actually in many cases you can't continue reading everything. My tale is not unusual. I started Kindling many years ago with a UK kindle account because, as was the case 2 centuries earlier, the Australian colonial offshoot was poorly provisioned and territorial borders were porous. Sometime later I was forced at gunpoint by the Bezos regiment to sign up with the local distributor and - it turns out - lost all rights to download onto new devices anything I'd acquired in the olden days. So there's some good stuff which will eventually die with my Kindle, although it still works beautifully.
Still, it's worth it if the focus on profitability allows outcomes like weddings in Venice.
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Thursday 9th April 2026 06:57 GMT GlenP
I'm Glad..
I recently replaced my 1st Gen PaperWhite then, except the 20% discount would have been nice! The battery had deteriorated to the point of becoming unusable and the replacement is much, much faster and with a significantly better display. I didn't need to replace it, I can read books on a tablet, PC or phone (as well as having several bookshelves full of old-fashioned paper) but it's convenient and Kindle Unlimited provides a stream of reading material so I was happy to do so.
I wonder how many pre-2012 devices are actually in use globally. Amazon aren't stupid, there must come a point at which engineering software updates to support a dwindling number of devices becomes uneconomic.
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Friday 10th April 2026 10:51 GMT Edward Ashford
Re: I'm Glad..
Yep, I checked mine and they are Gen5 and Gen6. The Gen5 is nearly dead, the Gen6 is almost but not quite annoyingly slow. And if all else fails I can use the app on the Samsung, which is where I read all my library books in Libby.
I like the Paperwhite, so I'll probably refresh in the next few years. Well before the Gen6 is forcibly removed from service!
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Thursday 9th April 2026 08:21 GMT steamdesk_ross
14 years is a pretty fair run, if you ask me
I love my Kindles, but don't love Amazon. But a Kindle works perfectly happily as an offline e-reader, if you source your books elsewhere and upload them with something like Calibre. It's also nice to install the book covers screensaver hack, because I always found it hard to remember which I'm reading when the book cover was just a close-up of a pile of pencils. You're doing well if your Kindle is still working at 14 years old, and it probably isn't backlit, which was a real game-changer for me (I get to read in bed when Mrs H wants to be asleep and undisturbed). I don't begrudge Amazon trying to ditch software support for something so old though, I bet the return on investment is very low at that age. At some point, your technical staff will outweigh the income and goodwill value from that segment, and then it's bad business to keep throwing money at it. 14 years is considerably longer than Apple tends to give.
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Friday 10th April 2026 14:10 GMT RaeStr
Re: 14 years is a pretty fair run, if you ask me
It's a matter of taste for some of the "improvements" though, isn't it? I have a fully-functioning Kindle Touch. I love the grey screen, find the paperwhite too glaring, and do not want a backlight. For me, the Touch is just right. But, as ever, YMMV.
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Thursday 9th April 2026 08:25 GMT aaaashy
its nigh time that the tech bros were taken down by law!!!
they make obscene amounts of money, waste it all trying to break take over the world
the future we are told is AI, pah, which in itself relies on stealing from all creatives, then they repeatedly trash hardware that works perfectly fine with software updates (i still use my mid-2010 Mac Pro, but only by putting up with all the broken bits of software that never needed to be broken!!!!
if only they had been corralled by laws that made trashing tech for no good reason illegal
if i had known 45 years where this whole tech bollocks was going i would have kept as far away from it as possible
rant over
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Thursday 9th April 2026 08:29 GMT aaaashy
its well time that the USA's dominance is changed
there is something very weird about the Californian bros mindset
the idea that EU is going to be looking at moving away from the american model is well overdue
i liked the time when i saw the computer and the internet as being a good thing ... for all of us
it has become a spiralling mess of crap
i actually wish the internet had never been created at times like this
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Thursday 9th April 2026 09:14 GMT Filippo
At this point, e-ink technology is mature. There are e-ink devices out there that just run Android (and, I guess, could run Cyanogenmod or whatever). There will be more and better in the future. I'll just get one of those, and never get a Kindle again. Makes it a lot easier to check out all kinds of other marketplaces, too. Great shooting on that foot, Amazon.
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Thursday 9th April 2026 09:32 GMT Anonymous Coward
Good news: my VERY old kindle, now has some value!
Bad news, it's conditional on my spending a lot more but not just that...
What's discouraged me from buying a replacement is the cost of books. The t&c effectively mean I'm not buying but borrowing. The prices are often very close to buying the physical book, mine forever: who gets the difference in production and distribution costs? I bet the author doesn't see much/any benefit.
Next issue is the crapification of Amazon book listings, loads of AI trash.
Its back to libraries and real physical bookshops, new and s/hand for me.
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Thursday 9th April 2026 10:06 GMT rg287
My wife and I are both in this boat. She bought me a paperwhite gen 1 when we were first dating, having been pushed it on Black Friday. She has a slightly older Kindle. Had I been in the market for an e-reader I'd have had one of the DRM-free ones, I think Sony did one at the time, and IIRC Kobo comes with proper ePub support instead of needing Amazon's proprietary format. I was always lairy of Amazon's lock-in.
Anyway, it is no surprise that the selection of Kindles being discontinued aligns with the devices that still used .azw instead of .azw3. The DRM on .azw is keyed to the device serial number - Amazon would encrypt the file at the point of delivery to a device. Consequently, it's not very hard - using a Calibre plugin - to break the DRM for files downloaded to an older Kindle.
I've done this for a while. My wife has - in the last 24 hours - made a point of downloading her entire catalogue to her Kindle and we'll spend some time at the weekend running those files through Calibre and securing our library. And then we need to find a decent source of non-proprietary eBooks.
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Thursday 9th April 2026 13:59 GMT ibmalone
I suppose I should be outraged, but I tend to read kindle books on the kindle app on Amazon devices instead and the battery on my last kindle is utterly shot. I do like e-ink readers, just I mostly have a tablet in the situations I might use one. Would like to find another ecosystem, but the last time I tried to find if a particular book was available on another platform all the alternatives had their own pain in the neck DRM process too.
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Thursday 9th April 2026 15:05 GMT nlaslett
All about DRM
This is 100% about DRM - and book authors who are unwilling to publish to a platform that leaks their work to AI training data. Older devices like these cannot support modern cryptography and DRM content is easily cracked. Amazon has been trying to plug this hole for a while; last year, they stopped allowing you to download book files (ostensibly to load via USB). This decommission list isn't complete; there are still some old models that break DRM, but they are moving in that direction. And yes, I know DRM is a fool's dream, is counter-productive, drives users away, and eventually fails. But all digital media is desperate to move from an ownership (or at least possession) model to a subscription model (e.g. Netflix). I don't like it but it is what it is.
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Thursday 9th April 2026 16:12 GMT Anonymous Coward
Anti Piracy move probably
I used to download the books and transfer them to my Keyboard via USB, but suddenly that option disappeared, probably because by keeping WIFI off, you could read the book as and when, and then when you went back on line it cleared out any expired books.
The problem is probably that the files are easy to get off and their format on those is mobi, which I think some people have cracked.
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Friday 10th April 2026 09:25 GMT Pete Sdev
Quality batteries
If there's really loads of people still using 14+ year old devices, that at least says something positive about the battery quality of said devices.
As a general rule of thumb, I'd not expect a portable device to go much past 7 years without becoming too degraded in useability.
My SO has a venerable Samsung S2 tablet that still technically works, except of course the battery life is now miserable and it's no longer really a practical portable device.
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Friday 10th April 2026 10:38 GMT nww02
well, that's me out then
I've already decided that Amazon is a cancer and have reduced my use of it to a bare minimum, but I've kept up my prime sub and kindle unlimited... I think I'll be ditching those as well now.
I like my kindle touches, I don't need to recharge them for months, they have functioning text to speech, their paper is a nice shade of grey that's easy on the eyes and they're extremely light.
I don't want another tablet or something that throws adverts at me. So I'm out. There's physical books I can buy from Waterstones, and often there's only a couple of quid difference in price anyway.
Bye bezos, no more ebook purchases from me.
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Friday 10th April 2026 13:54 GMT Nematode
And they knew they were going to do this a while back because they quietly removed the "download to your computer" option.
Finding an economic alternative to Kindle is damned hard, Kobo are megabucks, and e-book prices similarly. Amazon are locking out others by their pricing strategies. Still, even if we do bite the bullet, it'll be my Kindle that I replace as its battery is just about dead anyway, and then I'll buy and download books then move them to our Calibre library so SWMBO can pop it on her old Kindle. Even with new DRM, someone will write a plug-in update before long, as they have for all previous attempts to enforce DRM.
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Friday 10th April 2026 21:03 GMT Anonymous Coward
So, sales are low and all the Kindle users are still using their device from a decade ago? Sounds like this is the reason. The devices still work fine and what new software do they need to run? They get ebooks, they read ebooks. That was and is their function. I haven't upgraded mine because it works fine and I don't want a back-lit thing. The classic eink display was fine as an alternative to paper books... very similar to reading a book. Even if they offer 20% , I'm not in the nether for spending the current price of a replacement.
I get it, theres some hacks they want to stop.. some rooting and ebook snaffling... they probably want to be using mtls1.3 etc but there should be a way of allowing books to be put onto the devices locally etc
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Saturday 11th April 2026 09:06 GMT Ian 55
Given how tightly Amazon try to control these
WTF is the threat updates might be needed for?
Remove the terrible browser, and you have a device that only communicates with Amazon getting content Amazon supplies.
Or they could restore the ability to download Kindle files and upload them to the hardware via USB.
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Saturday 11th April 2026 14:54 GMT shocking
I'd had a Kindle DX for quite a while - it was a great way to get a bunch of PDFs into a small space that you could take into a machine room when you needed access to manuals. My current client is now very analytical about devices with USB storage in machine rooms, so that's not feasible anymore. Whenever I bought a Kindle book, I would download it & crack the DRM with Calibre, then convert it into ePUB and put it on another reader. I used to have a Hanvon N516 with the OpenInkPot firmware installed, which was pretty good, went through a number of ereaders including Kobo & Obook. None of them handle uploading 5000+ epunbs at once terribly well - one had to do it in chunks. Currently rocking a Kobo Clara, which I only bought because my original Kobo only had 4GB and ran out of space. No longer buy ebooks via Amazon, no via Kobo, and crack the DRM in Calibre. A lot of this was inspired by being charged over 200 pounds for excess baggage on a flight from the UK to Australia, mainly because my suitcase was full of books I'd bought during a 2 month stint working in Walton-on-Thames. I'd even mailed back a couple of boxes of books prior to departure.
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Sunday 12th April 2026 11:02 GMT dr john
Why would you buy a single use device like a Kindle???
I have read a couple of hundred e-books on my Android tablet. The one I am posting this from.
Because there in a kindle reader app installed. Along with other apps, such as email, web browsers, games, calculators, maps, PDF reader, and other things.
Why would someone spend £80 - £120 on a device to read a book when I can use a free app? A device that can't do all the things my tablet can do. A device where you can only use Amazon products.
Now I know things like kindle based textbooks can have images in them, but I don't have any textbooks on my tablet as I haven't needed a textbook for several years. But guess what, a google search says my free app can display any such embedded images! I don't understand why people would buy such a single use device. Now a friend who is a vet carries many textbooks on her device to help with tricky medical problems that she rarely sees and can't instantly diagnose, or to check the exact drug dosage to use when out in a farm field, or to check an image showing a specific unusual symptom. But that is a specific example where just perhaps a dedicated device might have a slight advantage over a kindle app. Perhaps...
So basically, why buy a Kindle device? Only a child would want the so-call status of only reading kindle books on a £80 kindle. I know a 12 year old who wanted a Kindle for Xmas and so far has only four books on it! All bought along with the device for Xmas. And I've never seen her reading with the kindle. The logic of her mother getting the device instead of ignoring the kid is beyond me, as the kid has an iPad and iPhone which also have a free reader app available, and the mother is not well off.
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Sunday 12th April 2026 14:11 GMT Jellied Eel
Re: Why would you buy a single use device like a Kindle???
Because there in a kindle reader app installed. Along with other apps, such as email, web browsers, games, calculators, maps, PDF reader, and other things.
Why would someone spend £80 - £120 on a device to read a book when I can use a free app? A device that can't do all the things my tablet can do. A device where you can only use Amazon products.
How much does an Android tablet cost? And can you slip it into your pocket? But figure on the average loadout for the elite urban IT warrior. Laptop in the backpack or manbag, mobile in the right jacket pocket, Kindle in the left. Convenient, especially now many jackets are tailored with pockets to fit gadgets. Also means jacket doesn't end up hanging lopsided with the weight of a phone in one side. I guess someone could make a plate carrier that looks like a waistcoat, but until then, carrying a tablet isn't the most convenient.
And then there's the battery life. Kindles charge pretty fast and last longer than a tablet, so ideal for spending hours in an airport, occasionally looking around at people trying to find a charging point. E-ink devices just help avoid the frequent flyer's version of range anxiety. Will my gadget keep me amused when there are the inevitable flight delays? Which based on observations, can also be FUN! watching people trying to use their phones for e-ticketing, e-checkin and now e-borders which rely on a working phone, and they've drained their batteries already.
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