New Kindle with frontlit display

[oilyfan]

Reading about the launch of the new Kindle touch and Kindle fire. Very cool stuff that Amazon has done with the Kindle.

I love my Kindle and really enjoy reading on it, and in bright sunshine it has no parallel as a great e-reader. But reading in bed at night required an add on light which was a pain, so I switched to the iPad to read at night, which is less than ideal as it is much heavier and bigger.

The new kindle touch has a "frontlit" screen that uses a flattened fibre optic screen to transmit light inwards from led's mounted on the bezel. Very cool, I might have to get one of these.

http://gizmodo.com/5940965/what-is-a-frontlit-display

Simply, a frontlit display is lit from in front of the display, as opposed to from behind. That sounds pretty straightforward, until you realize that the backlit screens on our phones and laptops and TVs display light by shining a bunch of LED lights directly into your eyes. It's beautiful, but the light coming directly at your eyes gets uncomfortable after a while. By directing the light at the display itself—instead of at your face—frontlit devices save your peepers from a lot of unnecessary strain.

The challenge for ereaders, then—one solved by frontlit displays—is to distribute that light evenly. That's no easy task considering that all the light typically comes from one side, and there's no way to shine it straight down from above like your typical book light.

[Mazrim]

The Paperwhite looks awesome. Might be time for me to upgrade from my 2nd generation Kindle.

[Russic]

I'm a new convert to the world of e-readers. While the Paperwhite looks fantastic, the older version just gets cheaper and cheaper. The Paperwhite doesn't have buttons does it? I much prefer that to a screen tap.

[Mazrim]

I agree that the lack of page turning buttons is bad, but I think that's going away no matter what we want in the future, and this is just another sign of that. I've somewhat gotten used to using the screen to change pages when I switch over to my iPhone to read so it won't be the end of the world for me.

[oilyfan]

Yeah I am on the fence about a complete touchscreen as well but the frontlit display has me intrigued.

[silentsim]

I used a Kindle Touch- I like it. Don't really notice any fingerprints on the screen.

Wish the Paperwhite were available for Canadian preorder.

[Ashartus]

Apparently Kobo is also releasing a front-lit reader as well as a smaller pocket-sized reader.

I like touchscreen most of the time but if I'm on the bus or otherwise only have one hand free I like having buttons too (I have an older Sony model, which is touch screen but also has buttons at the bottom).