I have been seriously contemplating making the upgrade from my existing second-gen Kindle to a Paperwhite. This is partly fueled by my increasing problems with eye fatigue as I age, and partly because a good friend got a Paperwhite recently, and I played with it a little bit, and I WANT ONE TOO. (You know how it is.)
But it got me wondering: should I buy a Paperwhite? What if there is a new Kindle model coming down the pipe? Because when I bought my current Kindle, about four months later Amazon released the Paperwhite, and I have been kicking myself ever since.
Amazon has been characteristically close-mouthed on the subject. However, one blogger has picked up the story of a recent patent that Amazon filed last September. The patent seems to be for a battery-free Kindle that picks up data and power from a nearby wireless station. The base station would also receive user input and push out the new data, essentially reducing the Kindle itself to a dumb client that simply displays what the base station tells it to display.
This remote display would be even thinner and lighter in weight than the Kindle, and it would certainly fix the issue of Kindle battery life being a concern among buyers. But there are some obvious drawbacks: Namely, that you would be restricted to only using it in your house (or another location that has a plugged-in base station, like your hotel room).
There are also some technological hurdles to overcome. Remote power currently works only over very short distances, like the power mats that you can buy for charging your smartphone. Beaming that power to a handheld device, without cooking anyone in range, is certainly an obstacle.
Amazon seems to be thinking about this system in conjunction with college campuses, where base stations could be deployed in a network throughout the campus, not unlike current wifi implementations. It will be interesting to see where they take this idea, though.
Image courtesy Flickr/alienratt
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