Amazon, Please Do Not Make The Kindle Touchscreen
That’s the trend now: touchscreen e-ink screens. Within the last 24 hours, Kobo and Barnes & Noble introduced models with new touchscreen e-ink displays. It’s a fantastic step in low-power consuming displays with really quick page refreshes and battery life. The new Nook has a 2-month battery. All good. Even the touchscreen is great technology with good-enough sensitivity. But I don’t want it in my next Kindle.
The beauty of e-ink screens is text looks fantastic. It looks just like text — or it’s the closest thing to paper print as technology gave us yet and the latest Pearl screen is awesome. But I don’t want to touch it. I don’t want to wipe my screen or worry in any fashion about the screen. True, e-ink screens aren’t LCD screens. They don’t have a glossy overlay that naturally sucks the oil out of my fat fingers. E-ink screens are generally finger-friendly. Still, why do I want to control the device with the screen?
In many ways this is BlackBerry versus iPhone. Touchscreen versus keypad. But it’s not the QWERTY keypad that I necessarily I care about. It’s the thought processes involved that are naturally inherent with touchscreens. They need to be cared for differently. Suddenly a screen protector is a must-have accessory. You’re going to be touching and prodding it after all.
Of course companies like Kobo and B&N needed this step. They needed something to make them fundamentally different from the Kindle. Touch control is, well, different for these companies but actually old news for the e-reading market. The Sony Reader Touch came out in 2009, which wasn’t exactly a blockbuster hit.
I just worry that a touchscreen will cause the Kindle to ditch its luddite charm. Even my grandma is comfortable with my Kindle. People understand buttons and I’m not saying the human race as a whole is too dumb to grasp the concept of a touchscreen. But there is certainly a sub-set of users that are hesitant to embrace the technology in their much loved device and I’m a card carrying member.