Someone who works for a big box retailer leaked the new 12th-generation Kindle Paperwhite today. The front and back of the retail box were on an eBay listing before everyone went wild, and then the listing was pulled. The screen size has been increased from 6.8 inches to 7 inches, and the storage starts at 16GB. The device is waterproof and has adjustable warm and cool lighting. It also hypes the fact that it has weeks of battery life. This will be a black-and-white e-reader since the retail box has no colour imagery.
Intrepid Reddit users looked at the Mac address on the retail box and did a scan, resulting in a legitimate Amazon product. If this is the case, the Paperwhite 12th generation should be an incremental upgrade, not the revolutionary e-reader we had all hoped for. There are no page-turn buttons, an ambient light sensor, speakers or a colour e-paper display. Maybe this will be on the Signature Edition instead, but who knows?
Although this new Amazon Kindle Paperwhite 12th Generation appears to be a minor upgrade, I am sure it will continue to be the most popular e-reader in the world within a year. However, with such a small iteration, some enraged users may be driven to competing brands, such as Kobo.
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.
