Amazon is cancelling the shipping of their first color e-reader, the Kindle Colorsoft. They are suspending the delivery for up to a week or more. Anyone who ordered or pre-ordered the device will not receive it until November 9th to 18th in the US and November 26th in the United Kingdom. Customers who received shipment notifications are now being housed in an Amazon warehouse and not actually being delivered. Amazon has done this because there are severe issues with the e-paper display. There is a slight yellowish bar at the bottom of the screen. This has resulted in bad publicity and terrible reviews. The Kindle Colorsoft currently sits at 2.6 stars with over 350 reviews.
For the first time, things are so wrong with the Kindle Colorsoft that Amazon is calling customers who leave negative reviews. They ask questions about the yellow bar on the e-reader, want access to the device logs, and ask them to send the device to their engineering team and get another unit. In other cases, Amazon deletes negative reviews willy-nilly.
Amazon customer service has told many customers that they are working on a software update for the Kindle Colorsoft as a patchwork fix. They will likely try to fix the yellow bar with software, maybe by muting it so it’s less noticeable. The estimated time for the fix is at the earliest in a week and, at the latest, in two weeks. Amazon has told Good e-Reader that this yellow bar issue might go away if you physically reboot the device and leave it powered off for a couple of minutes before restarting.
Dark mode is also unavailable on the Kindle Colorsoft; they have updated their product description page on the US website to let customers know this feature does not work. Dark mode inverts the colours on the screen, so the background is black, and the text is white.
I feel that Amazon rushed out the Kindle Colorsoft to compete against Rakuten Kobo, Onyx Boox, Remarkable and Pocketbook. Releasing the product too early bypassed the quality and assurance to ensure the launch succeeded. I can’t remember any e-Reader issued by Amazon that had this many issues so quickly after a launch.
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.