4 things my Kindle from 2009 does better than the latest model

• A sliding power button
• Page-turning hardware
• Headphone jack
• External speakers

Ventures back to your childhood bedroom are often accompanied by treasure hunts through cardboard boxes and drawers that haven’t been opened in a decade or two. Over the holidays, my most recent trip down memory lane yielded an unexpected boon: a second-edition Kindle from 2009.

My mother shared this special device with me, and when I brought the ancient thing to her in a fit of squeals, she smiled fondly upon it and said, “This changed everything back then.” Any bookworms who remember struggling to decide between physical novels to pack for vacation know what I mean.

While the battery life held on by a thread, I spent some stolen minutes reading old Hunger Games novels on the geriatric device over the last few weeks. I must say, there’s a bit of old hardware that makes me want to write to Amazon and beg for its return. Here they are.

A sliding power button

That you don’t accidentally activate

My Kindle Paperwhite wakes up by pressing the simple, skinny power button on the bottom of the device, just to the right of the charging port. Whether it’s my thumb or propping it up too firmly against my desk, the amount of times I’ve accidentally woken up or put to sleep my e-reader is enough to make your eye twitch — especially in the middle of a suspenseful scene. Why would Amazon put the power button on the bottom of the tablet, where it’s certain to be activated by accidental placement as easily as intentional touch?

It’s a problem I never had back in 2009 with my second-gen Kindle. Not only was the power hardware located out of reach at the top of the device, but it wasn’t a button that could be accidentally pressed at all; rather, it was a switch. Users would slide and release the spring-powered toggle to wake the Kindle, put it to sleep, and hold it in place to shut down the e-reader entirely.

Granted, the spring mechanism left old Kindles vulnerable to water, dust, and other materials getting inside and possibly jamming the hardware, which would leave you unable to even turn the device on — so, I can see why Amazon did away with it as the touchscreen initiative really took hold. But, I enjoyed the switch over the button for both its placement and tactile certainty — everything is a button nowadays, and there was something both satisfying and nostalgic about sliding the toggle over to shake your e-reader awake.

Page-turning hardware

Fewer interruptions, ironically

It’s rare to encounter personal gadgetry without a touchscreen nowadays, short of many laptops and most TVs. Touchscreens can render almost any hardware moot, short of power buttons and charging ports (but even then, wireless charging capabilities pose a threat), by folding the controls into a device’s software. They also allow the display to expand into the hardware’s old real estate and boost the specs in that department.

I confess, my second-gen Kindle from 2009 has a traditional and frustratingly small screen — mostly thanks to the QWERTY keyboard taking up nearly a third of the surface area. Without touch capabilities, it also has a joystick toggle, menu button, back button, home button, and previous and next page buttons. While I could live without most of them, the previous and next page buttons are something I actively miss on my 2024 Kindle Paperwhite.

Removing hardware in favor of software sounds like a logical upgrade, right? Sure, but reading is better when your hands don’t have to move as much. My Kindle Paperwhite’s touchscreen display takes up almost the entire device, which is one of my favorite draws to it, but when it’s time to turn a page, I have to lift my thumb up from the bezel and swipe to get there. Is it a nuisance? Not necessarily, but if Amazon could strategically place a tiny page-turn button on new Kindles’ already-small bezels, it’d remove that movement entirely — it’s where my fingers are resting anyway.

Page-turning hardware on new Kindles would also reduce the mistakes that sometimes come with touchscreens, like missed taps, highlighting text you didn’t mean to, and accidental page turns when you shift your grip. And now that it’s winter, well, let’s just say my gloves aren’t the best of friends with my e-reader’s touchscreen.

Amazon was on the right track when it released the Kindle Oasis and Voyage, the most modern models with page-turning buttons. However, the Oasis was discontinued in 2024 and the Voyage back in 2018, so you can only find older models on sale.

Headphone jack

For those of us that still rock wires

This one might be unpopular, but I don’t think any device suffers too much from a headphone jack. The world may have gone Bluetooth a long time ago, but there’s no denying the presence wired headphones still have. Every once in a while, they reemerge as fashion statements, but true audiophiles know that lossless audio is best achieved with a wired connection — Bluetooth compresses audio too much to achieve a truly lossless experience. Some say it’s worth the convenience trade-off, but I digress.

I still walk around with my bright green, discontinued Bose wired headphones, and I’d like to be able to plug them into my Kindle to listen to an audiobook without jumping through the hoops of the Bluetooth connection process. It feels weird enough to connect my e-reader to Wi-Fi, and it just feels plain alien to connect my Powerbeats Pro 2 to the device that’s supposed to be disguised as a book.

TL;DR: Bluetooth isn’t convenient on Kindles. Wired headphones may be more analog, but plugging them into a simple headphone jack is much more convenient than linking an e-reader up to a whole new external device.

External speakers

A resurrection could open doors if done right

When I first got my hands on an iPod touch back in 2010, I was most excited about one feature: built-in external speakers. Not a touchscreen, not the opportunity to download apps or text my friends, but the ability to play iTunes songs without headphones. It was an obvious and substantial upgrade from my third-gen iPod nano (that was virtually useless without a 3.5mm jack), but in the Kindle world, it’s a basic feature lost to time and the crusade of simplicity.

My second-generation Kindle sports two external speakers on the back of the device, plus a subtle volume toggle on the right edge. If you’ve read any of my other articles, you know that I am a proud Kindle minimalist, so why would I be advocating for the return of such a frilly feature? You get what you pay for with Kindles, even if the extra bells and whistles aren’t my bread and butter. But if you’re someone who likes audiobooks and doesn’t necessarily want to don your Bluetooth headphones while you’re alone in your house, external speakers could be a wonderful addition to some of the higher-end models. In pure Amazon fashion, too, the company could call external speakers a premium feature and charge more, like it does with wireless charging on the Signature Editions.

Amazon did away with external speakers when the first Kindle Paperwhite stole the spotlight in 2012. It’s also likely that external speakers will never see a comeback for the sake of IP ratings and thinness-focused initiatives.