Amazon China posted all of the details regarding the new Kindle Oasis for a few hours this morning before the listing was removed. We now have a ton of pictures and some basic specs that give us all a sense about the new flagship Kindle.
The first thing I noticed was that both page turn buttons are on the same side of the Kindle, whereas the Voyage and other e-readers tend to have one on each side.
The asymmetrical design is intentional because Amazon has packed in the largest battery to date. Apparently we will get 20 months of battery life in standby mode, which is close to two years. In conjunction with the new solar powered battery case, your e-reader will never have to be physically recharged ever again.
The Kindle Oasis will feature a 300ppi screen, matching the Kindle Voyage in terms of sharpness and text clarity, and apparently there’s been a 60 percent increase in the number of LEDs inside, so the backlighting should be even more uniform when you’re reading in the dark.
It does not look like this e-reader is waterproof or employs the new IMX.7 dual core processor. It simply looks like a natural evolution of the Kindle brand and it remains to be seen if this will be worth the upgrade.
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.
