The batteries last forever, and they’re rarely subject to the same sort of daily abuse as our smartphones.

Prior to the long-awaited Paperwhite update that brought USB-C to the line roughly this time last year, Amazon hadn’t announced a single device refresh since summer 2019.Ĭan you blame them? For starters, people keep their readers around for a long time. Sure, there have been refreshes over the years, but not even those have arrived with any sort of regularity. It’s kind of perfect, really, for a product line that conquered the world and then took a backseat to the rest of Amazon’s offerings.īefore the September Kindle Scribe announcement, the line hadn’t received a SKU since the 2016 arrival of the premium Oasis. It’s the first step into a world that would include tablets, an army of smart home products, wearables and one ill-fated smartphone. In the context of the letter, the device is simply a prelude. It was not the most sophisticated industrial design (it was creamy white in color and the corners were uncomfortable for some people to hold), but revolutionary because it offered customers the ability to download any of over 90,000 books (now millions) in 60 seconds-and we got better and faster at building attractive designs. Our first foray into devices was the Kindle, released in 2007. CEO Andy Jassy gave the e-reader a rare bit of love in last year’s shareholder letter, noting: It’s been a strange ride for Amazon’s first hardware device.

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