Making the Colorsoft occur, Amazon executives mentioned at a launch occasion on Tuesday in New York Metropolis, required much more than simply swapping in a brand new show. “Frankly, the know-how simply wasn’t prepared” prior to now, says Kevin Keith, who runs Kindle merchandise for Amazon. “And we now suppose the tech is prepared.” (Kobo, Exceptional, and others would possibly disagree that it wasn’t prepared earlier than.)
The Colorsoft relies on E Ink’s Kaleido know-how however makes use of a wholly new show stack for Kindles, all the way in which again to a newly designed oxide backplane that makes it simpler for E Ink panel’s tiny bits of ink to maneuver round rapidly. The E Ink world has been engaged on comparable tech for some time, and Amazon thinks it’s the important thing to creating coloration work effectively. The Colorsoft has new LED pixels, and a brand new manner of shining gentle by them individually to boost colours. It’s additionally brighter than ever, to assist the entire thing really feel extra vivid. A few of this tech additionally helped the brand new Paperwhite flip pages sooner and simpler, however it was designed to make Colorsoft work.
All that show tech, Keith says, allowed Amazon to introduce coloration with out including page-turn latency, reducing the machine’s decision, or hurting distinction on the show. “All of the issues you concentrate on with Kindle — excessive decision, lengthy battery life, quick web page turns, good fluidity — we weren’t prepared to sacrifice these,” Keith says. The purpose was to supply a coloration display screen that also regarded simply pretty much as good because the Paperwhite in black and white, and he’s satisfied Amazon acquired there.
In a short demo at Amazon’s launch occasion, I used to be impressed with the Colorsoft’s show. It’s no iPad display screen, however it’s sharp sufficient and vivid sufficient to make comics pop with out being so saturated it seems mistaken. The obvious downside is that when there’s a coloration picture on the web page, the machine does a full flashing refresh each time you flip the web page; Keith says that solely occurs when there’s a sufficiently massive picture on the display screen, however it occurred to me even with some fairly tiny photos. However these photos look good! Once more, not iPad-level good, however actually sharper and brighter than some coloration E Ink screens we’ve seen on units just like the Kobo Clara Color.
Better of all, pages flip quick and books open rapidly — if this factor is meaningfully slower than the brand new Paperwhite, I didn’t actually discover. On an everyday e-book, the 300ppi display screen seems about pretty much as good as the opposite Kindles, too. You’ll be able to pinch to zoom on most photos, and in my demos the picture will zoom easily however pixelate till it refreshes a second later. We’ll must do much more testing, although, and I fear all of the display screen flashing would possibly get annoying as you navigate by an extended graphic novel.
The largest upside of a coloration display screen to this point is simply that it makes the entire interface somewhat nicer. It makes your homescreen and library higher to browse, now which you can see your e-book covers in full coloration. It’s additionally an enormous win on the lockscreen, which now presents a way more vibrant standby display screen whereas it’s in your bedside desk. (Keith appears to suppose lots of aesthetically minded BookTok of us are going to like the colour display screen.) The one actually color-specific characteristic is which you can now add highlights in a number of colours after which look them up later by coloration within the Kindle app in your telephone.
For extra conventional readers, the Colorsoft is admittedly only a dearer Kindle Paperwhite with one neat new trick. However don’t be shocked to see the Colorsoft tech finally come to different components of the Kindle lineup. Amazon waited so a few years so as to add the tech, desirous to get it proper earlier than it provided it to patrons. Now it feels it acquired it proper. Which implies finally it could be in all places.
