It’s been over 7 months since Amazon announced their new lineup of Kindle Scribes, and while the Colorsoft version and the BW frontlit model were released back in December, the Kindle Scribe without a frontlight has been mysteriously unavailable since then, but now Amazon has finally revealed a release date.
There’s a banner at the top of the product page for the Kindle Scribe without a frontlight, and it says the device is getting released on June 10th at 07:00 Pacific Time. That’s exactly 4 weeks from today. I checked Amazon UK and Amazon DE and both international websites show it will start shipping on June 10th as well.
I wonder why it took Amazon 6 months longer to get the version without a frontlight on the market, especially considering it’s the same as the frontlit version minus the light.
Aside from the light, the only difference between the frontlit version and the version without a frontlight is the available storage capacity. With the frontlit version you have the choice between 32GB and 64GB. But the Kindle Scribe without a frontlight is only available with 16GB, and only 10GB is usable.
Personally, I think the storage capacity on most E Ink devices is total overkill these days given how small ebook files are, but for a notetaking device that’s marketed as a PDF annotator/reader, 10GB is simply not very much storage space to work with at all.
There’s also the fact the best-selling Scribe models are usually the ones with the most storage space. Like right now the 64GB Kindle Scribe Colorsoft shows 1000k+ units sold during the past month, while the 32GB version shows 500+.
The lack of storage space is likely to turn away more people than the lack of a frontlight.
I also don’t like how dark Amazon makes the screen look in all the product pictures. Black and white E Ink screens don’t look that dark and grey under normal lighting; it looks more like a color E Ink screen without the frontlight on. The truth is the Kindle Scribe without a frontlight will likely have the best-looking screen of all the Scribes without the added light layer. They aren’t doing it any justice with those crappy pictures.
Without a light and less storage capacity I am surprised at how expensive it will be,
All 3 kindle scrines are launching in Australia on 10th June, finally!
Scribes*
I was in a Best Buy store this past week, and discovered that they finally have a couple of the latest Kindle Scribes exhibited. In the store that I was in, there was a somewhat elaborate display that had both a B&W Scribe with a front light and a graphite Colorsoft Scribe. The display had a couple of buttons that when pushed would start a short show explaining the features of the new Kindles, on an attached LCD screen. Frustratingly, the Scribes were locked down so that they couldn’t be held or turned into landscape mode. I only had a short to look at the new Scribes, but I think they are a significant improvement over the previous versions.