Hasta La Gadget!

For those who love reading their Kindle e-books on their iPhones or iPads, Amazon has recently issued a statement which strongly suggests that those who have the Kindle app on their iOS devices should update it before they install the iOS 7 update, which at this point in time does not have a specific release date. According to Amazon, without going into specifics, “This is a fix for a Kindle issue with the upcoming iOS7 OS upgrade that may cause customers to have to re-register and re-download books from Amazon. Please download and install – this is a required update before upgrading to iOS7.”

It is unclear if this is an issue with the Amazon Kindle app itself, or if there is some kind of conflict with the iOS 7 code that will cause this issue. In any case it’s not a big deal having to redownload and reregister, but why go through all that hassle when the update can be done and over with in a matter of seconds/minutes, right? Apart from that the bug does not appear to be too disastrous, but for those with the Kindle app on their iOS device, you might want to hit the update button just to be safe.

Amazon Issues Mandatory Update For Its Kindle iOS App original content from Ubergizmo.

Late last week, Wall Street Journal vets Jessica Lessin and Amir Efrati claimed that an Amazon phone launch was imminent, and that the handset would be free. Amazon has responded to those claims, stating that neither is true.

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Amazon has a thriving hardware business. It develops and sells some of the most popular e-readers and tablets. The company has long been rumored to be working on a smartphone, not much is known about that device up till now. According to a new report, perhaps Amazon will offer its smartphone free to customers. It isn’t known right now what sort of a catch will be attached to the company’s smartphone, it has apparently contacted wireless carriers about the possibility of carrying its new device. Though it is believed that Amazon will offer the smartphone through its own website. The rumor comes from two former journalists who worked at WSJ.

There’s a possibility that along with the free smartphone, the company might require customers to sign up for Amazon Prime. However, people who are reportedly familiar with the matter claim that Amazon wants the smartphone to be free for customers even if they don’t sign up for any service. Much like the Kindle tablets, the smartphone is said to run on a forked version of Android. Amazon will obviously have to cover up the cost of production, it can’t offer free smartphones out of its pocket to customers. It will have to come up with a plan that’s radically different, the company hasn’t said anything as yet about those plans.

Amazon Smartphone Will Be Offered To Customers For Free [Rumor] original content from Ubergizmo.

It’s all too easy to dismiss the optimistic fantasies of yesterday: flying cars and robot servants may have filled the pages of Popular Mechanics in the 1950s, but today we’re better grounded in reality, pinning our hopes on more reasonable futures based on technology we’ve actually developed. Still, even those predictions fall flat sometimes, and it can burn to look back at the track record of a horse we once bet on. For this editor, that stallion was known as color e-paper, a series of dimly hued electronic-paper technologies that teased a future of low-power gadgets with beautiful, sunlight-readable matte displays. Prototypes from half a dozen firms exhibited tantalizing potential for the last half of the 2000s, and then promptly vanished as the decade came to a close. Like many ill-conceived futurist predictions, expectations for this technology gently faded from the consumer hive mind.

The legacy of color e-paper may be muted and dim, but its past, at least, is black-and-white: monochrome E Ink set the tone for a decade of reflective, low-power displays. Years before the iPad and other tablets created the so-called third device, sunlight-readable E Ink screens nested into the public consciousness with Amazon’s inaugural Kindle. Launched in 2007, it was a blocky, expensive and awkward device that had more potential than practical application, but the visibility of the Amazon brand lifted its stature. Consumers paid attention and the e-reader category was forged.

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So we know all about Amazon’s new Kindle Paperwhite, but those press images don’t really do the trick, do they? Weirdly, we had to travel all the way to Berlin, but we did manage to get our hands on the new device. As we said before, there aren’t a ton of aesthetic changes here. Thankfully, we had our last-gen Paperwhite in hand, and quite frankly, we couldn’t really tell the difference — until we picked it up, that is. Gen two of the Paperwhite is noticeably lighter than its predecessor.

Longtime Paperwhite users will be able to tell you that the minute they hold it in their hands. Another obvious clue: the giant Amazon logo on the soft-touch rear. Granted, we’re probably picking nits here (especially yours truly, someone who carries his own Paperwhite around in a case), but the older Kindle logo was a bit more tasteful. We did really appreciate the front lighting in the earlier generation — and then Kobo came along with the Glo. Since then, things haven’t really been the same.%Gallery-slideshow81815%

Update: Amazon wanted us to let you know that the version of the Kindle we had a chance to look at is specifically intended for the European market.

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