The Amazon Kindle used to be one of the best e-readers in the world, with rock-solid stability. Things in 2024 are the opposite; various firmware updates have resulted in nothing but trouble. With the firmware 5.16.10.0.1, things have been going downhill fast. The reading progress bar system has changed, and the fonts are too small to read, and it takes a while to show up. Battery drain is a serious issue, with the Kindle taking only days to run out of juice instead of weeks. Often, the Kindle becomes unresponsive and has to be rebooted to work, and even custom fonts are reverting to the default Bookerly instead of the one you want.

The issues with the Kindle’s firmware are just the tip of the iceberg. Kindle Unlimited titles are vanishing from libraries, and sideloaded books are being deleted when in Airplane mode for extended periods. Opening a book now takes twice as long, and Voice View’s functionality is erratic, starting and stopping at random.

Quality and control of Kindle firmware development are at an all-time low. Many of the top executives at Amazon, who were in charge of software and hardware of quit the company or retired. A new generation of talent is at the top ranks, and many long-term Kindle developers were also laid off last year when Amazon fired thousands of workers. This is likely because Alexa, Kindle, and Fire tablets were losing 5 billion dollars per year and did not have any end in sight for making them profitable.

It is sad to see the Kindle, which used to have deadly hardware and an intuitive software experience, fall so fast in the eyes of its customers. Amazon has not publicly acknowledged any problems with the Kindle, even though thousands of users on Reddit and the Amazon Forums are complaining en masse. If Amazon cannot get the Kindle in a good place sometime soon, the next e-reader they buy might likely be from their competition.