You know when you see someone's obituary and you think, “I could have sworn they died years ago”? Well this week begins with a story I could have sworn I had reported on some years ago (I think I was actually remembering this story about emergency updates to enable devices to stay connected).
ALLi News Editor Dan Holloway
It's the news that Amazon has announced it will shortly cease to support some of its earliest Kindle devices.
The long and the short of the announcement is this. To quote Amazon's notification:
Effective May 20, 2026, Amazon will end support for Kindle e-readers released in 2012 or earlier.
Affected Devices
The following Kindle e-readers are impacted:
- Kindle 1st Generation
- Kindle 2nd Generation
- Kindle DX
- Kindle DX Graphite
- Kindle Keyboard (3rd Generation)
- Kindle 4
- Kindle Touch
- Kindle 5
- Kindle Paperwhite 1st Generation
It's not the case that these devices will become unusable. Rather, they will lose functionality as a precaution following on from the lack of support. There are clearly set out guides to what is and isn't going to be affected. In short, what will go is connectivity. Machines won't be able to get online. So you can't download or borrow new titles.
You can still read the titles you've already downloaded (presumably this also means that Amazon has no way of removing these from your device should they for any reason be removed from the Kindle offering).
Reader Reactions and Workarounds
The reaction has been about what you might expect. Whilst tech companies rendering devices obsolete is hardly a new thing, there has still been eyebrow-raising from those who see such obsolescence as part of the negative impact technology has on the environment and both people's attitudes and their wallets when it comes to the constant need for replacement.
And the response from readers has also been a predictable frustration with having to add to or ditch perfectly good devices if they want to read new books.
You can still use a USB cable to import documents including titles you've bought on another device such as through the Kindle app on your phone (PC Mag gives readers tips on all the ways to get books to your old devices). But although this only directly affects two million devices from what I can glean, the impact might be wider.
Like Apple, Amazon's secret sauce is tying proprietary media software to proprietary hardware. And if people start wondering whether they want to read on hardware that they can't buy once and figure they may as well read on their phones, might they also lose the chains to the software they choose for their e-books too?
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