Amazon changed things up with the release of the Kindle Oasis by including a leather charging cover with every purchase.
The cover is included with the Kindle Oasis because it is a vital part of the equation. Amazon essentially took most of the battery out of the Kindle and put it in the cover in order to make the Oasis as light as possible.
The cover is designed so that you can easily take it on and off, or you can also just leave it on all the time if you want.
For the most part the cover is meant to be taken off while reading to take advantage of the Kindle Oasis’s unique shifted design that makes it feel extra light.
With the cover on and folded back the Kindle Oasis feels more like a regular ereader.
The cover adds thickness and weight to the left side so you can hold the Oasis from the smaller side if you want, or flip it over to use the buttons.
The cover is held in place by magnets. All you have to do is basically set the Kindle Oasis on the cover and it shifts into place automatically.
The cover fits into the Oasis’s curved design so it doesn’t cover the entire back of the device. The front of the cover is a thin flap that is also held in place by magnets both on the front and when it’s folded back. There’s an Amazon logo on the front and on the inside, and of course it has the automatic sleep/wake feature.
The cover charges via the Kindle; it doesn’t have it’s own charging port. Then the cover keeps the Kindle charged whenever the two are connected.
When the cover is connected a battery percentage meter appears on the quick settings menu that shows the charge of the cover and the Kindle.
Overall the Kindle Oasis’s cover is surprisingly small and the battery doesn’t add as much weight as you’d think. The cover weighs 3.8 ounces (107 grams) and it comes in three colors—walnut, merlot, and black.
On the plus side the cover doesn’t add much bulk but it also doesn’t provide very much protection. You almost need a second heavier-duty case for travelling and such. I wouldn’t feel very confident in the charging cover protecting the Kindle in a bag or purse with other items jostling around.
In the video below I show how the slim Kindle Oasis cover compares with the Kindle Paperwhite in a leather Noreve cover. They are at the opposite ends of the spectrum. The Paperwhite’s cover is thicker than average so I included the picture above against the inkBook Obsidian with it’s tight-fit cover. The Oasis still looks pretty tiny by comparison.
Update: Here’s the link to my full Kindle Oasis review for more details about the device.
It small enough that perhaps putting it in a sleeve case for travel isn’t so bad. The concept of buying an additional case for it is a bit strange however. But if you don’t look at the charging case as a “case”, instead see it just as part of the oasis, then it’s not so weird. Think of the combo as modular I guess.
I heard Amazon is coming out with another cover to protect the premium cover. Cost should be about $90 since its premium leather and this time it says Kindle on the front and not Amazon so as to switch it up. Im so excited I just might buy 2 different colors.
They may have been anticipating that the IMX7 might have been available by the time the Oasis was announced and shipping; which is said to have better power-saving idle modes and lower power consumption overall, while offering roughly double the speed when unthrottled. Since ereaders spend most of their time idle on a page, two weeks might have been able to have been stretched 3+ weeks? 4? Maybe with the case battery,one might be able to almost double the power reserve of the previous generation?
The front-light design might be another instance of thinking ahead to other prospects, while touting the aesthetics now. It might be overkill on a 6″ screen, but by placing the lights on the side and increasing light dispersion, you might be able to scale the system up to a 7″, 8″ 9″ screen and have at least as good a distribution as on the 6″ model. Also, if Carta isn’t scalable, which had the main advantage of higher reflectivity for use with the front-light, you might be able to use other e-ink screens instead, like Mobius and still have a good, even light spill, enabling larger screens while still keeping the benefits of higher density, etc.
It might take a few more steps, but Amazon or some OEM will piece it together. Whether e-ink is still the draw it s now, then or is replaced/displaced by other tecnology…eh, who knows.
Scary thought, but if Amazon keeps pushing for lighter, more svelt designs, they might be able to use those small tech bumps to shrink the battery more and use a lighter screen, while keeping the current run-time. We might have an e-reader with a weight pushing close to 100 grams in the next couple of years.
There already was one a few years ago called the Wexler Flex One that only weighed like 110 grams. It had a plastic based screen but the screens had a high rate of failure so they didn’t make them for very long.
I’m a big fan of Amazon but not of having their name carved into the leather cover of their high end Kindle Oasis. If the rumor Jake mentioned is true the $90 premium leather cover will be an improvement both for protection and appearance. Still, if I’m going to buy a premium leather cover I either want it to be plain or have a hand tooled artistic design…not a product name.
It is ironic that the WiFi only Oasis price with the rumored premium cover approaches the cost of the original Kindle which was, if memory serves, $399. Of course the original Kindle included 3G.
Jake was just being sarcastic. There is no other cover.
Should have picked up on that. Mark one up for Jake.