30
votes
Amazon killing purchasing, borrowing and downloading books for older Kindles
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- Title
- Amazon is cutting off support for older Kindles
- Published
- Apr 8 2026
- Word count
- 223 words
ATTENTION ARCHIVISTS: It is now of critical importance to archive the official update packages from Amazon from this support page ASAP.
Device owners who would like to keep using it: Take your kindle offline immediately, jailbreak it if you can, and block OTA updates. If you can't jailbreak now, stay offline until an exploit on the 'final' firmware is found.
For many older kindles, updates are not cumulative and must all be applied in order. I don't think they'll keep them online for long, given half the motivation probably has to do with their continued jailbreakability. Should probably save hashes, name files appropriately, and create torrents.
I'll be starting myself as well, but the more people archiving independently to compare hashes the better.
Another planned obsolecence driving ewaste haters to piracy.
I thought this was apropos.
A couple of months ago, I jailbroke my 2012 Kindle Paperwhite, which was functioning just fine. No real reason to do so, I just thought it could add extra functionality; but after finally picking it back up again, I couldn't remember how to use it properly and realized I didn't really care about any extra features of the jailbreak.
So I factory reset it and tried to register it again with Amazon. It kept turning me down. I deleted it from my account and tried over the next several days, figuring there was maybe some issue on Amazons end.
Turns out, they maybe already disabled support for it, per this article. Ah well, I figured after owning it for the 8 years I have, it was time for something different, so I picked up a used Boox Go 6, which I've been pretty happy with. I like that it runs Android, which feels like it'll end up having decent amount of life in it and I enjoy that I can put whatever I want on it, given it's a more open platform.
I guess you didn't own it after all
As proven by jailbreaking, there is no reason that even the OG kindle can't be used as an e-reader.
It's just inconvienient for Amazon to let people do so.
Yes.
It's not about support. It's about "you need to buy a new one because Amazon needs to keep growing. Also the new ones are better at spying on you and better to provide upselling to watch movies or something".
It's a shame that most electronic devices now are so user hostile. The goals of the user and the seller are completely different. Same for websites, cars, many other things.
Speaking of cars, I've heard that the garage door opener stops working on the latest Honda models if you don't pay a subscription fee.
Yes, I could understand a device that requires internet access needing support for security updates. That fact is very convinient for manufacturers that want to sell support agreements and new hardware to you over and over forever; but it is unfortunately a fact nonetheless.
There's no reason that an e-reader requires "support" though. It doesn't require internet access to do it's job. It's not a tempting target for attackers. It's just an appliance, so this move is pure, undisguised greed, nothing else.
It's no different than if my oven decided it could no longer bake pies because it's no longer supported, or if my lawnmower stopped running because it lacks critical security updates. Stuff like this should be blatantly illegal, but because it fuels the US economy, it won't be.
I wish we could govern in a way that forced companies to do actual productive work, instead of just finding new creative way to extract people's money by fucking them over.
It also seems reasonable for them to stop supporting a device after 18 years, although arbitrarily blocking purchase and delivery of books shows that it's not just about endless support.
That's not even the oldest networked device that's still in active usage in my house.
That honor goes to my 22 year old WRT54G, the best 2.4GHz IoT router out there, still getting community firmware updates
They don't want to support their old devices? Fine. Unlock the bootloader and release the source code.
This should be law.
Really can't stress this part enough. It does not have to be this way. We can and should require companies to make open the things they no longer support.
We have the public domain for IP, though I'm not surprised that this hadn't been updated to tech given the poor track record of geriatric legislators.
Wouldn't matter, they have copyright for another 100 years....
If only. I wonder what changes we might have seen in virtualization of the cancelled vmWare products had been open sourced. Other previously open source products were un-open sourced when that company was acquired.
It's likely because supporting older devices is what has held them back from turning off older/weaker DRM and they want to tell publishers that new stuff will be locked down more.
A few months ago I looked up the instructions for putting a new battery in my gen 2 Kindle. Even then they were set up to be disposable, the battery is glued in.
I jailbroke my kindle oasis, which I love (apart from its dire battery life) and it has been amazing. I find the reader way more complicated, WAY more complicated, just so many options and everything, and way uglier than the normal kindle library experience. BUT i no longer have to plug it in to my computer and use calibre to send books to it. Now it just connects to my wifi and I have all my books served up in an OPDS catalogue. it's ugly as sin, I'd never recommend it to my family or people I love (or even just like), but if that's your jam, it's amazing.
From the article:
Well, this ensures that my next e-reader won't be made by Amazon. I can get away with no support, I can even understand that. But bricking it (if there is a need to reset for any reason)? No thanks, I'm not supporting this.
Yet another way they're contributing to further amassing of e-waste. Old devices should always be repairable, resettable, etc and they should not be built in such a way that they solely rely on a corporation to keep them working.
I had an old keyboard Kindle that somehow broke itself just sitting in a drawer. Tried replacing the battery and nothing. Tried tons of resets and nothing. Just permanently bricked. Nothing I could do to repair and reuse old hardware.
Turns out it was a great thing to have happen because I switched to a Kobo device and I use it exclusively in offline mode (have to edit a config file to enable this setting- but now I ONLY transfer books via USB) and got away from having an Amazon device. I have also gotten rid of Alexa and that was a great decision too.
I am not saying Kobo is perfect but it was a better option. I do not buy books from Kobo or use their online services. I may have still had to create an account for initial setup though and that's a problem if true. So don't consider this post an endorsement. Would rather have a completely open device.
Bricking on reset is asinine and should not be legal.
I am glad jailbreaking remains an option for those with devices that are still operable. If they don't keep the devices useful we will do so in spite of them
I really don't understand how it would be bricked by a factory reset. Shouldn't it just be factory reset and unable to download updates from the server, but still able to load books manually?
Unfortunately the article doesn't explain exactly why. Maybe to use the device at all after a factory reset requires registering the device to an account which they will now block? I think it might be something like that. Might be a setup step that you can't bypass
Yes, I was really just hoping an incompetent journalist used the wrong term.
At least on my Kindle 3, a factory reset does not downgrade firmware. If they push one last OTA update, a unjailbroken device could theoretically be destroyed.
It cannot possibly be that difficult to keep old devices on prem for backwards compatibility testing.
It cannot possibly be that hard to maintain two kindle versions of books, one with new features and one without.
Microsoft has literally been doing this for decades just fine.
I agree with you, but I doubt that has anything to do with their reasoning. They don't have a reason to support old devices other than ethics (lol) or it makes them money. I'm guessing they did the math on how often users of older devices purchased new stuff and decided it wasn't worth supporting it for them.
I'm fairness, there has to be a point at which there aren't enough users of older devices to bother supporting them. Having said that, I won't give Amazon the benefit of the doubt. They could support it at a loss or if good will, but i suspect they are cutting it much earlier than the cost/benefit analysis requires. Especially if "making people happy" is factored into your benefits.
Yeah this is a good example of how most people are not like me, most people don’t think about why their devices aren’t working when they stop working, they just buy another.
If people did actually think about it no one would ever tolerate a company doing this. It would not cost them much. Testing is automated and it has been for many years now. Microsoft Word still works with .doc files and converting a .docx to .doc or vice versa is easy. They’ve been doing it since 2001. The cost would be basically nothing for Amazon to do this, they just don’t because we let them get away with doing this even though we don’t let Microsoft get away with it. MS Word stops working, theres a support team to help you. Theres no support for Amazon and no one ever made them support their products.
It isn't just the hardware support. The older devices don't support newer DRM, so it also means keeping weaker DRM books available.
I got away from kindle the moment I could. I understand that they’re cheaper (or at least they were when I looked) and not everyone can afford alternatives, but if you can I HIGHLY recommend not supporting amazons death grip on the market.
I posted my thoughts on technology and general relationship of people to technology a few times.
This is simply one of the many things that is possible by, among other things, people simply not caring. Not to say it is the cause but it could have been something preventing moves such as this.
This entire thing just makes me miss my old Barnes & Noble Nook tablet. RIP you glorious little e-ink reader; gone too soon, accidentally crushed by my elbow. Maybe I should just go ahead and wipe my 8th Gen Kindle and sell it while I still can… if I ever could.
Does this mean the older devices won't work with overdrive? I bet it does.