Amazon has announced that, starting May 20, 2026, Kindle devices released in 2012 will no longer have access to the Kindle Store. You will still be able to access the books downloaded on the devices, taking into account that we should not factory reset the Kindle. If we do, we will not be able to register it in our Amazon account.
Goodbye to old Kindles. If you have an early Kindle, starting in May you won’t be able to download books from the official Amazon store or register them as new devices when you restore them. Specifically, these are the affected models.
- Kindle 1st Gen (2007)
- Kindle DX and DX Graphite (2009 and 2010)
- Kindle Keyboard (2010)
- Kindle 4 (2011)
- Kindle Touch (2011)
- Kindle 5 (2012)
- Kindle Paperwhite 1st Gen (2012)
- Kindle Fire 1st Gen (2011)
- Kindle Fire 2nd Gen (2012)
- Kindle Fire HD 7 (2012)
- Kindle Fire HD 8.9 (2012)
Amazon is sending an email to affected users, offering a 20% discount on new Kindle devices and credit compensation for purchasing new books. Likewise, all the purchases we have made on the old device will be available if we log in to the new one with the same account.
It’s not the first time. Amazon has long wanted to have tight control over the installation of books on its Kindles. One of its most recent updates ended with a star function: being able to send books to the device via USB.
In the same way, Users were required to keep their Kindle updated to access the store. In practice, this meant limiting features—such as downloading books outside of the Kindle Store—to push users to install those more restrictive versions if they wanted to retain access.
Almost a paperweight. A book reader to which we cannot download more books is not very useful. A questionable decision considering that this type of device is born to have a useful life only limited by its hardware – that the screen ends up saying enough, which is difficult with electronic ink or that we are left without a battery replacement.
Amazon has decided to end the life cycle of a product that still had a war left to fight. Not because the hardware has stopped working, but because maintaining its compatibility no longer fits with your business model or your current ecosystem.
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