UPDATE: Amazon has paused Kindle Colorsoft shipping following screen issues

Amazon's first color ereader only just went on sale and it's already got problem

News By Sharmishta Sarkar published 5 November 2024

• Users have complained about discoloration on the Kindle Colorsoft screen
• Amazon said it was looking into the problem
• It's now temporarily cancelled shipping till a solution has been found

Amazon's first ever color ereader has only just gone on sale and users who've received their early orders are already unhappy, with some returning the Kindle Colorsoft or exchanging it for a new one.

As first reported by The Verge, a strip of yellow is marring the bottom of the Kindle Colorsoft display for some users, leading to a rather dismal 2.6 star rating (at the time of writing) on the Amazon listing page in the US.

In fact, the discoloration isn't uniform for all users. As per the Reddit thread on this problem, some users are also seeing the discoloration along a vertical edge as well as along the bottom. Others aren't too bothered by the yellowing, but they have returned their device due to "a corner speckled with dead pixels".

Colorsoft has yellow tinge to bottom of display from r/kindle

Not everyone seems to be miffed by their purchase however – other Kindle Colorsoft customers seem really happy with their new ereader and the user reviews on Amazon are mixed.

kindle from r/kindle/comments/1ggrajr/my_color_soft_arrived_what_is_everyone_talking

It's as yet unclear whether the discoloration is due to a software or hardware problem but, as per a post on the original Reddit thread, Amazon says it's aware of the problem and is working on a fix. That could indicate it's just a software glitch, but if the lighting on the screen isn't even, it's likely more due to faulty hardware and a firmware update may not help.

UPDATE (Nov 5): Amazon claims it will need a week or two to find a solution to this problem and, until then, shipping of the color ereader has been temporarily cancelled. Already-ordered devices will now ship only on the week of November 9 or November 18 in the US and after November 26 in the UK.

We haven't yet received a review sample of the Kindle Colorsoft here at TechRadar, so we haven't experienced this for ourselves, and the short time we spent with the device at its media launch in October showed no such problem.

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