Amazon will be releasing the Kindle 4 later this year and it will feature an all new comfortlight system. This technology will mute the vibrantly white screen in low light conditions make it easier to read. The Paperwhite will employ 17 LED lights, 10 white and 7 others. It will be announced this summer and be released soon thereafter.
LAB126 the secretive research and development facility has designed every single product Amazon has ever released and last year they created a bunch of engineering prototypes of the Paperwhite 4 to try and nail down the design. Amazon was not happy with the current direction of comfortlight screens, since the e-readers issued by Barnes and Noble, Kobo and Tolino were predominantly orange. LAB126 was mandated to come up with a new lighting system to mute the orange colors to eliminate white light, but still create a solid reading experience. It looks like early this year they solved the problem and “mass production is underway,” said sources in the upstream supply chain.
One of the big ventures of 2017 was Amazon incorporating their Audible audiobook unit into the second generation Oasis. A few months later they issued a series of firmware updates updates to the Kindle Basic and first generation Oasis. The Paperwhite 3 was the odd man out, but this will change with the advent of the Paperwhite 4 and users will be able to plug in a pair of wireless headphones or speaker and listen to their audiobooks.
It is rumored that the new Paperwhite will employ the IMX.7 dual core processor, but this has not been confirmed.
The new Paperwhite 4 will be apart of the 3 SKU strategy. Amazon will only be marketing the lowend Basic, Paperwhite and the Oasis. The Voyage is going to be phased out and most models are out of stock in Canada the US store.
There are a few unconfirmed rumors. One will be that the new Paperwhite will have two different variants of internal storage; 8GB and 32GBS. There will be a white and black variant for more color options. The other rumor, which is a bit of a stretch is that it will employ the IMX.7 dual core processor.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.