Kindle E-Readers cannot be turned off anymore

https://www.reddit.com/r/kindle/comments/kt6qcu/can_you_completely_turn_off_the_kindle_oasis/

by ruph123 • 5 years ago

73 84 5 years ago

ashton314• 5 years ago

Ugh, I hate this kind of stuff.

At the same time, I’m a poor college student who finds the fact that the Kindle edition of books is often half the price of a physical copy, and everything is available through Amazon.

Can anyone recommend a good ereader/publisher stack? I’ve considered trying to find ePub versions and then converting them to work on my Kindle—is that possible?

Help free me from this prison!

Hitton• 5 years ago

Converting from epub to mobi or azw3 which are consumed by Kindle is easy. Calibre can do it and it can be even run from commandline. Problem with Kindle/Amazon is the "Kindle Unlimited" program which although profitable for authors, is bad for people who want to avoid Amazon's clutches, because it doesn't allow authors to sell ebooks elsewhere.

falcolas10• 5 years ago

Funny story about formats, apparently Amazon recently changed their policy about what ebook formats they accept: mobi (a native format for Kindle) is no longer one of them.

Source: A writer I follow had a book submission declined until they reformatted it from .mobi to .epub, and they discussed it on Facebook.

mdoms2• 5 years ago

I bought a Kobo and haven't failed to find a book in their store yet.

captn3m03• 5 years ago

I’ve considered trying to find ePub versions and then converting them to work on my Kindle—is that possible?

Calibre does this perfectly.

Alternatively, if you have a jailbroken Kindle - KOReader lets you directly read EPUBs.

salamandersauce5• 5 years ago

I wouldn't say perfectly. Amazon's own tools do a far better job than Calibre for ePub to AZW which shouldn't be too surprising because that's how they're typically made.

Calibre is handy thanks to plugins but I have found it lackluster for anything more advanced than a basic Latin script novel for conversion. Stuff like Japanese where it needs to do R2L it just completely falls on it's face. Comic books don't work well either.

LeSaucy• 5 years ago

Wow that is crazy that you have to jailbreak to enable that! My Kobo Libre just shows up as a mass storage device that I drag epubs on to and they just show up in the "My Books" list.

waterheater3• 5 years ago

I recommend the Remarkable 2. In addition to serving as an e-reader, it is an excellent notebook replacement.

As a cool note about the Remarkable 2..."under that Eink screen sits a dual core 1.2GHz ARM CPU, with 1GB of RAM, running Linux... and... you can SSH into it by default!!!" [1].

[1] https://github.com/danielebruneo/remarkable2-hacks

falcolas10• 5 years ago

Downside: It's about 4x the price of a mid-line Kindle, and closer to 7x the cheap editions.

katabasis• 5 years ago

I have a Remarkable 2 (and love it), but one downside is that it only takes DRM-free books for it's e-reader. I wish the company would partner with some publishers so that I could buy books to read on the device.

At least we have Standard Ebooks[1] in the meantime!

[1] https://standardebooks.org/

andrepd• 5 years ago

As for eReaders, I recommend Kobo. Top hardware and the software is also easily hackable. You can manage your library with Calibre and it will read most everything you throw at it.

bathtub3652• 5 years ago

I have OverDrive set up on my Kobo so I can check out books from my local library and read them on the device. It works great.

salamandersauce5• 5 years ago

Check out Boox. They make eInk Android tablets so you can just use the Kindle, Kobo, Google Play, Libby, etc. apps on it with no problems. No need to convert everything, crack DRM etc. Even those crummy textbook publisher apps work too. They are a bit pricy but they do a lot more than a Kindle and most models these days come with a Wacom pen for note taking and markup.

I buy a lot of ebooks between multiple stores so having all on one device without loads of hoops is great. I ended up getting 2, a smaller one for reading books and a bigger one for marking up PDFs. Love em.

Y_Y• 5 years ago

Library Genesis will free you from that prison. It has most books and papers I've ever needed and it's less immoral than Amazon.

http://libgen.gs/

bathtub3652• 5 years ago

How is this not just pirating books? This seems to be much more immoral than Amazon, and also illegal in many places.

georgeecollins• 5 years ago

I like my kindle, but I have noticed that my newer one has less battery life. I am not saying it got old and had less battery life, I mean new it didn't have the longevity of the old one.

I leave it sitting-- I thought off-- sometimes for a few days. The power goes down. Now I know why.

I love ereaders, and I have always loved using a kindle. But I realize now (too late I guess) I should have been supporting an open standard rather than becoming part of another roach motel eco-system.

mmoskal• 5 years ago

You can try turning off WiFi if you don't need it. I found that to greatly improve battery life.

yosito2• 5 years ago

I recently ditched my kindle for an Onyx Boox Note Air. No regrets.

ruph123• 5 years ago

Such a nice device! And the software is so full of features. I was quite surprised and suspected a much shittier product. Just the case situation is dire.

yosito2• 5 years ago

I like that it ships with Android and without Google Play Services.

simion3145• 5 years ago

You want to turn off your device? What is next ? you want to read content that we do not approve( think at the children and your grandma)?

Seriously, this makes me think that soon you will not be allowed to really turn off your phone and other smart devices, then you will really have no choice then put them in your fridge when you waZnt to have a true private conversation/action.

npongratz• 5 years ago

Microwave might be a good choice as well, depending on your opsec requirements -- it's a Faraday cage by design.

falcolas10• 5 years ago

Amazon is already censoring books and manga they don't approve of on the kindle.

For example, you can not buy Mushoku Tensei Vol 6 on Amazon for Kindle, even though it's still available on other platforms (and on Amazon in print form). The reason? Drawn topless children in a slave pen.

simion3145• 5 years ago

Big companies are hypocrites, similar disgusting things they do is signaling how political correct and LGBT friendly they are and at the same time they are BFF with Saudi Arabia.

cforrester12• 5 years ago

I don't blame them for refusing to sell child pornography regardless of the legality or the format. Media meant to trigger the pathologies of the mentally ill, such as content encouraging paedophiles to continue sexualizing children, isn't something that anyone has a duty to sell or distribute.

salamandersauce5• 5 years ago

That seems like a weird stance to take when they sell it for Kindle on Amazon.co.jp.

Arrath2• 5 years ago

Joke's on them, my kindle turns itself off when it decides to precipitously drain the battery in a matter of minutes for no apparent reason.

Usually when I'm boarding a long flight. Cheeky fucker.

Google234• 5 years ago

An alternative explanation is that the battery has reached its end of life

Arrath2• 5 years ago

Given that it is a, I think, gen2 paperwhite, you are almost certainly correct in your assessment of my humorous comment.

However, I don't like to generate waste so as long as it still, generally, holds its charge for weeks I'll continue to use it.

SavantIdiot3• 5 years ago

Not following. According to TFA, it does turn off automatically, but the screen is E-Ink which uses zero power after programming. The user doesn't understand this.

Why the freakout, what am I missing?

(Disclaimer: I have a 2013 Kindle and I still get about a month out of each full charge.)

EDIT: If you really want a freakout, how about the fact that Amazon is no longer loaning their publishing catalog to libraries. That makes owning a kindle a difficult choice.

https://www.theverge.com/2021/3/10/22323434/amazon-publishin...

falcolas10• 5 years ago

Kindles have background processes which do drain the battery badly. To support their search feature, they will index all of your books that are downloaded onto the kindle. They will also regularly poll the network to download new books you've purchased. And then there's bluetooth (on the Kindle Oasis).

I've had an "off" kindle drain itself dry in a day from these.

mdoms2• 5 years ago

I've had an "off" kindle drain itself dry in a day from these.

I don't believe you.

SavantIdiot3• 5 years ago

I've had an "off" kindle drain itself dry in a day from these.

I find that hard to believe. I've left my in non-airplane mode and maybe after a week it drops 40%.

Since I always leave it in Airplane Mode I'm probably seeing different behavior than OP. Plus it is an older kindle, not a fancy new one. But still: screw active Wi-Fi.

neartheplain• 5 years ago

The screen may not draw power, but the WiFi, cellular modem, and system board remain on in the background. The device wakes and sleeps according to its own software and schedule, or network activity.

In terms of user experience, this change makes it harder to store your Kindle in a charged state for longer than a week or so. Edge case for sure, but still a seemingly unnecessary feature removal.

brewdad2• 5 years ago

This is why I keep my Kindle in airplane mode until I need wifi to download something new. I really only read on my e-ink kindle, so keeping books synced between devices isn't an issue for me. YMMV.

morpheuskafka• 5 years ago

Additionally, whatever micro-controller inside could easily be set to stop all clocks and go down to picowatt levels of power, triggered on a pin interrupt from any of the buttons. This is no different that most computers that draw a phantom amount of current whenever plugged in.

SavantIdiot3• 5 years ago

Wake on interrupt with aggressive gating and poweredown has been around for about three decades now. Pretty much anything with a battery and an MCU has multiple levels of clock gating / power gating at the core, package, and platform. It's implied when building a low-power device, so I'm sure it wasn't a kindle oversight.

(FYI "phantom power" is unrelated, it is power supplied to microphones to power the condenser.)

bondarchuk• 5 years ago

I was thinking we could do the opposite with e-readers, since they have a persistent display: it's always off, it only momentarily turns on to flip the page when you press a button.

hazeii• 5 years ago

Max Headroom, 1987 [0]:-

Edison Carter checks out the cops busting into some girl's apartment. He and his colleague want to know the score, and the cop pulls back a cushion showing how she's hotwired her TV:-

Janie Crane: "An off switch?" (looks shocked)

Metrocop: "She'll get years for that. Off switches are illegal!"

[0] https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Max_Headroom_(TV_series)

throwaway81523• 5 years ago

Do Kindles have microphones?

Edit: lol, yes. This is from 2010:

https://www.wired.com/2010/08/why-does-the-new-kindle-have-a...

beervirus• 5 years ago

https://old.reddit.com/r/kindle/comments/kt6qcu/can_you_comp...

Fixed link.

ncmncm• 5 years ago

Obligatory Douglas Adams reference: "Mode Execute Ready"[0]

If it ever really turns off, you can't turn it back on, because what is watching the button? To really turn off, it needs a switch. Which is to say, your phone also will not turn off; also, except by the battery dying.

[0] "Ford flipped the switch which he saw was now marked "Mode Execute Ready" instead of the now old-fashioned "Access Standby" which had so long ago replaced the appallingly stone-aged "Off"."

Adams dated his work implicitly by the word switch. "You must mean a physically bistable combined control/indicator." Red or green paint that gets covered or uncovered by moving it was once the pinnacle of industrial design chic, challenged only by designs that made it impossible to know which way was on.

dTal• 5 years ago

A button is a spring loaded normally-open switch. It seems to me to be perfectly possible to implement "fully powered off" in any device with physical buttons; once you've made the initial connection, you can trip a MOSFET to keep the juice flowing.

underseacables• 5 years ago

Not cool. I don’t trust Amazon enough not to use that always-on for nefarious purposes.

Kindle E-Readers cannot be turned off anymore

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