The Kindle Paperwhite hasn’t received an update in a year

Sep 17, 2014 12:31 GMT  ·  By

Amazon seems to have fallen asleep as far as eReaders are concerned. It’s been over 12 months since its popular Kindle Paperwhite received an update, so it seems it’s high-time the retail giant did what is expected of it and roll out a successor.

Rumors of a third-gen Paperwhite have been floating around here and there, but we failed to notice anything consistent about such a product.

Anyway, some avid researchers stumbled upon a listing for a Kindle “Voyage” product on Amazon's German and Japanese official websites (as seen at Caschys Blog).

A new Kindle might be coming

The filings don’t really reveal much, but they shed some light on a few details, including the fact that the device will sport a 6-inch screen and have 300ppi.

We’re also given the dimensions (112 x 116 mm / 4.4 x 4.5 inches), which suggest that Voyage will be smaller than the current Kindles. Furthermore, the new eReader will be 8mm / 0.31 inches in profile.

The digital reading device will arrive in Wi-Fi and 3G versions and upcoming costumers will have to pay $190 / €147 and $250 / €192, respectively, for these models.

Even if we don’t see any images of the Voyage, the specs indicate towards the fact that the eReader will come embedded with a press sensor that will allow users to turn the page by virtue of pressing lightly on the bezel. There’s also a mention of “intelligent front lightning.”

Could it be possible that Amazon is looking to replace the Paperwhite moniker with the Voyage brand instead? Or maybe the company is looking to offer a variation with a smaller frame aimed at frequent travelers (hence the Voyage name).

Previous rumors talked about a third-gen Paperwhite 3

At this point, it might be worth mentioning that, a few months back, news surfaced that Amazon was indeed prepping a new Kindle Paperwhite model, which was codenamed Ice Wine.

Apparently, the retail giant was looking to build a super slim and sleek eReader to impress the masses with.

Going further back into the past, we heard that the third-gen Kindle Paperwhite might arrive with a flexible Mobius display that could take advantage of TFT technology.

Mobius displays are expected to weigh 50% less compared to glass-based TFT displays, so the information fit right with the whole Ice Wine theory.

At this point we can’t really say for sure whether Ice Wine is the same with Voyage, but the device seems sleek enough to us. We’ll just have to wait and see.