Reports are starting to trickle in about new features showing up on some Kindes after the latest 5.19.2 software update.
This post on reddit shows the Kindle Colorsoft with eight different color choices for bookmarks now. Kindles never used offer any color choices for bookmarks, and that’s not even something the Kindle iPad app offers (but now it’ll probably get colored bookmarks soon too), so that’s an entirely new feature.
Now the change Amazon made to bookmarks with the previous update is starting to make sense. And as I noted in the 5.19.2 software update post, my Kindle Paperwhite now has separate filtering options for bookmarks, notes, and highlights from the annotations list. I wonder, can the Colorsoft also filter by color? (I’m starting to regret not getting a Colorsoft the last time it was on sale.)
There are also a number of reports of the Colorsoft getting a new green color for highlights. Since release, the Colorsoft has supported blue, orange, pink, and yellow highlights so adding green to the list is a nice bonus for avid highlighters. But why are bookmarks offered in 8 colors and highlights only 5? That’s kind of odd.
Also, how do the colored bookmarks translate to black and white Kindles? If you add a blue bookmark with the Kindle Colorsoft, what happens when you view the bookmark on a regular Kindle? I guess they’ll probably all just show up as one color like highlights do, even though BW Kindles show 16 levels of grey and could technically show different colors of grey, but that would probably be too confusing. They could also add a letter to the bookmark to indicate the color, but I don’t see that happening either.
It’s cool to see some people getting new features on their Kindles, but why can’t Amazon just say when features like this are getting added to Kindles? Once again the release notes are blank for the 5.19.2 software update, so nobody knows what to expect. How hard is it to just say in the release notes the Kindle Colorsoft now has colored bookmarks and green highlights.
It’s always a mystery what will change with Kindle updates, and the changes rarely appear immediately after updating so even if your Colorsoft is updated you might not see these changes for a while yet.
Can the Collections folders get color options too, now? Especially if bookmarks are getting far more colors then highlights, which is unfair. I prefer keeping my ebooks in folders and I would love the ability to add some color to differentiate between folders.