Next Generation Kindle to have a backlight

Amazon is apparently prepping illuminated E-ink Kindles for market. Or not, depending on how much you trust the source. Techcrunch’s Devin Coldewey was lucky enough to get a brief glimpse at an in development Kindle. He lives near Amazon’s new offices in Seattle, Washington, and caught a glimpse of a device wielded by an Amazon employee disguised in a cardboard case. The device featured a slider along the top that, when slid, produced a cool blue-white light.

This move has been forecast for a while. Amazon purchased a company specializing in light-guiding technology way back in 2010, and the occasional prototype E-ink reader has appeared with backlighting.

While a new Kindle with a built-in backlight would be nice (if a bit ironic--E-ink has long been touted as being better for the simple reason that you didn’t have a glowing screen), if confirmed it would mean that more advanced types of Kindles probably aren’t coming in the next year. That means no bistable display, nor mirasol, or any other form of advanced energy saving display technology.

Because the device was in a cardboard enclosure, Coldewey really couldn’t learn anything more about the device than that it had an E-ink screen and that it glowed. But he was told that the industrial design hadn’t been finished, so anything he did see would be subject to revisions.

So there you have it. The next generation of Kindle is going to feature a glowing screen so that you can read it in the dark, much like a poor man’s Kindle Fire.

TechCrunch Photo by : FLEx