With Amazon making news about their decision to stop supporting the first five generations of Kindles, Kobo is still supporting most of their ereaders going back 15 years.
Not only is the Kobo Touch from 2011 still being supported, it’s still getting occasional software updates that add new features. In fact, Kobo just released another software update, version 4.38.23684, for most Kobo models going all the way back to the Kobo Touch.
According to the release notes, it’s a minor bug fix update:
Store
Addresses an issue that prevented credit card information from being added or updated on your eReader when completing purchases
I’ve been critical of Kobo for slacking off on software updates in recent years, and the frequency of new features getting added has gone way down compared to years back, but at least they’re still supporting their older models and releasing bug fix updates for them when needed. Amazon stopped updating the 5th gen Kindle Paperwhite, the latest model to get the unsupported designation, in 2015.
Kobo did stop supporting their first two ereader models back in 2019, nine years after their initial release. The Kobo Mini was also dropped, but Kobo is still supporting all their other E Ink ereaders.
I don’t think that Kobo can realistically keep supporting some of the older models for very much longer, and things seem to be winding down some now with the Kobo Libra Colour, Clara Colour, and Clara BW all on a newer firmware version with some exclusive features that haven’t been ported to the older models, but it’ll be interesting to see how long they can keep support going for some of their earliest models.
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