Amazon unveiled a new Kindle e-reader on Wednesday, and it features a colour display for the first time.
TakeAway Points:
- Amazon is introducing four new e-readers as part of a complete portfolio revamp.
- The business unveiled the $279, Oct. 30 shipping date for its first Kindle e-reader with a colour display.
- Amazon unveiled the 12th generation Kindle, the improved Kindle Paperwhite, and the new Kindle Scribe with generative AI features.
- Amazon.com,announced that it had inked three agreements on creating tiny modular reactors, a nuclear power technology.
Colour screen Kindle
The retailing giant introduced the Kindle in 2007, and every device since then has had a black-and-white screen. The new Kindle has a display that’s designed to ensure colours don’t appear washed out or pixelated, even when users zoom in on images.
The $279 device, which Amazon is calling the Kindle Colorsoft, has “weeks of battery life,” the company said. It can be preordered now and ships on Oct. 30.
Amazon also unveiled a refreshed $399 Kindle Scribe with new note-taking features, an updated $159 Kindle Paperwhite and a 12th generation Kindle, which costs $109. At a press event in New York on Tuesday, Amazon’s devices chief, Panos Panay, called the updates the “largest single refresh that the Kindle lineup has ever had.”
The Kindle Scribe, which Amazon introduced in 2022, comes with a pen that allows users to take notes, make to-do lists, and write directly on the pages of the book they’re reading. With the new note-taking feature, called Active Canvas, users can take notes directly on an e-book’s pages and the text will automatically shift to flow around it. They’ll also be able to take notes in the margins of the book and hide them for later.
The Kindle Scribe includes another new feature that uses generative artificial intelligence to summarize pages of notes into a concise list. Amazon said the feature uses Bedrock, a software tool that lets users access large language models from Amazon and other companies like Anthropic and Stability AI. The device is available for preorder now and ships Dec. 4.
The new Kindle Paperwhite is faster than previous models, and also features a larger, 7-inch display, up from 6.8 inches on the prior version. Amazon says the 12th generation Kindle is its most “compact” e-reader ever, with a brighter display. Both devices are available starting Wednesday.
Amazon.com joins push for nuclear power to meet data center demand
Amazon.com said on Wednesday it has signed three agreements on developing the nuclear power technology called small modular reactors, becoming the latest big tech company to push for new sources to meet surging electricity demand from data centers.
Amazon said it will fund a feasibility study for an SMR project near a Northwest Energy site in Washington State. The SMR is planned to be developed by X Energy. Financial details were not disclosed.
Under the agreement, Amazon will have the right to purchase electricity from four modules. Energy Northwest, a consortium of state public utilities, will have the option to add up to eight 80 MW modules, resulting in a total capacity of up to 960 MWs, or enough to power the equivalent of more than 770,000 U.S. homes. The additional power would be available to Amazon and utilities to power homes and businesses.
“Our agreements will encourage the construction of new nuclear technologies that will generate energy for decades to come,” said Matt Garman, CEO of Amazon Web Services.
SMRs will have their components built in a factory to reduce construction costs. Today’s larger reactors are built onsite. Critics of SMRs say they will be too expensive to achieve the desired economies of scale.
Nuclear power supported
Nuclear power, which generates electricity virtually free of greenhouse gas emissions and provides high-paying union jobs, gets wide support from both Democrats and Republicans.
But no U.S. SMRs exist yet. NuScale, the only U.S. company with an SMR design license from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, last year had to axe the first SMR project to build its technology at a U.S. lab in Idaho.
In addition, SMRs will produce long-lasting radioactive nuclear waste for which the U.S. does not yet have a final repository.
Scott Burnell, a spokesperson at the U.S. NRC, said “no specifics” about the planned SMRs have been presented yet to the regulator.