This post is for those of you who think that technology always advances. It ain’t necessarily so. I’m in a bit of a quandary. Back in 2014 I purchased an 8.9″ Kindle Fire HDX. I selected it after looking at all of the competitors at the time—it was obviously the best. It has served me well over thousands of miles of travel in a dozen countries.
Recently, it has developed a problem which I have learned is called “ghost touch”. The screen is not responding properly to touch inputs and the device is essentially unusable. I have three alternatives:
- Replace the screen myself.
- Find someone to replace it for me.
- Buy a new device.
The problem I face is that there doesn’t appear to be any tablet on the market today that has as good a resolution as my old Kindle. They all look pixellated (blocky) by comparison. What I have is slow, it doesn’t have a lot of memory, it can’t run present-day Android apps, and it’s not upgradeable but it’s still a better device that the prospective replacements.
This is not the first time that I’ve had the experience of modern technology actually being worse than old technology. The most recent time was 20 years ago. My old home wireless network was actually faster and more reliable than anything on the market even today. And that wasn’t even the first time I had that experience.
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Switch over to the iPad. It has a better screen by far than any Kindle or Nook. And it makes a great reading platform. There is a Kindle app for iOS and Android tablets that will allow you to access your Kindle books.
The iPad has a substantially lower ppi than my Kindle (264 vs. 339).
From Google: “The original iPad Mini’s screen has a resolution of 1024-by-768 pixels, while the Retina display model has a 2048-by-1536 resolution. The Kindle Fire HD runs at 1280-by-800, which the Kindle Fire HDX improves to 1920-by-1200.”
Get the Retina display.
I have both a Kindle Paper White and an iPad. Reading on the iPad is more natural than on the Kindle.
Plus, the iPad is a mini computer, with web browser, email, word processors, spreadsheets…
You can get a keyboard for the iPad, so you don’t have to thumb the screen. However, tablets are best used as consumption devices rather than production devices. Whenever I need to write something (like now), I use a desktop, not a tablet or laptop.
The screen geometry of my Kindle is 2560×1600 pixels. By a year or so after the version of the Kindle I have was introduced Amazon changed its strategy and the 1920×1200 resolution you mention replaced it. Today to get a screen geometry close to that you’ve got to go to a 12″ display—that’s a greatly lower pixel density.
The present iPad mini has almost that high a pixel density but I’d need to accept a substantially smaller display. Whichever way I go is a downgrade.
Interesting. I looked up a site that lists all tablets by PPI and sure enough those with the highest numbers are all from 2013-2014.
Phones still have much higher densities than tablets though the screens are obviously smaller.
I suppose this is a money-saving measure. Most people probably won’t notice.
Mass market appeal. When you’re depending on very high production volumes for economies of scale, it crowds out higher screen densities.