Someone with a vendetta against Amazon has posted some images and details on reddit about a new color Kindle that is supposedly getting released later this year.
The pictures show a prototype of what looks like a basic 6″ Kindle with a white bezel and a color E Ink screen. The prototype doesn’t have a frontlight but apparently the final product does.
The name Kindle Petit Color appears in one of the pictures, but the OP says that name isn’t finalized yet, and even if it is that might just be a regional name (the OP seems to be located in Brazil).
The photos definitely look legit, and some of the details given make it sound like the person really does know what they’re talking about.
One of the most interesting details reported is the fact that it will have a detachable bezel with different colors available to purchase. After reading that I initially thought it had to be fake; there’s no way Amazon is doing that.
But the way the OP wrote the comment makes it seem legit (slightly edited):
It will be released in white or black, and for the first time, the bezel will be detachable, so you can use different ones (which will be release also in november this year), in green leaf, deep purple, chromatic gray, and a special edition called mermaid, that changes from soft pink to soft teal depending on the angle you look at it.
That just sounds way too specific to not be real, even down to the way Amazon always uses descriptive colors instead of just saying green or purple. But why wouldn’t they just offer the new Kindles in those colors? Does it really make sense to have the bezel removable? Kobo did something like that a long time ago with the Kobo Mini, but the backs were replaceable with different colors, not the front.
The OP also talks about the new color Kindle having the option to change the color of the text and reading progress indicator based on how much of the book you’ve read. Apparently you can personalize the settings with up to 4 shades of color that changes as you progress through a book (from 0-25% it’s one color, then a different color for 26-50%, etc).
The pictures back that up, but I find it hard to believe that anybody is really going to want to read blue or green text. It makes sense for the progress indicator to change color, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the former was a beta feature that never makes it to the final release.
The OP says the new color Kindle uses a Kaleido 3 screen like the Colorsoft, which is evident from the pictures, but the OP says the colors are more saturated than the Colorsoft, and you can control the density of each color.
It’ll be interesting to see how this all pans out. I can totally see Amazon releasing a new 6″ color Kindle later this year, but will it really have a replaceable bezel? Will the color of the text really change color based on your reading position? That’s something they could do now with the Kindle Colorsoft if they really wanted to make color changing text a new feature, but it really doesn’t seem like something Amazon would do (giving people more customization settings isn’t usually their style).
