Amazon has a storied history with physical page-turn buttons. Most of their devices in the early years had physical keyboards and buttons to turn the pages of an e-book quickly. When the Kindle Touch was unveiled, it was the first e-reader with a touchscreen display, and the company had rapidly embraced touch first in most of their products. The last Kindle devices with buttons were the Kindle Voyage and three generations of the Oasis. The Oasis was discontinued in 2022-2023, and Amazon will never release another e-reader with page-turn buttons again.
The last Kindle e-reader most people are familiar with is the Kindle Oasis. The company first unveiled it in 2016, positioning it as a high-end e-reader with page-turn buttons and an asymmetrical design that made it easy to hold in one hand. The company refreshed the e-reader in 2017 and again in 2019. The Oasis was the most expensive Kindle ever and was designed with premium materials, such as aluminum.
Amazon moved on from the Kindle Oasis with the advent of the 11th and 12th generation Kindle Paperwhite and Paperwhite Signature Edition e-readers. These replaced the old premium e-readers, with larger screens, more storage, and the latest E INK Carta 1200 and 1300 e-paper technology. If you look at the current generation of Kindles, the Colorsoft, Scribe, Paperwhite, and Kindle all have touchscreens with no buttons.
Amazon’s Devon Corvasce told Good e-Reader, “Today, all of our devices are touch-forward, which is what our customers are comfortable with.” He made it clear that Amazon did not intend to make a Kindle with page-turn buttons, making it clear that this is how the industry has shifted from Blackberries to modern smartphones and tablets.
The Kindle may never have page-turn buttons again, but many e-readers on the market do. The Kobo Libra 2, Libra Colour, and Sage all have buttons to turn pages. Barnes & Noble has them on all their current-generation NOOK readers, and the European company Pocketbook has them on almost their entire lineup. It has included them for over a decade.
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.