This was called the “Kindle with Special Offers” and sold for $79 because the screen saver would display different ads, while the version without ads cost $109.
Of course, I installed the hack to get rid of the ads as soon as I received it. haha
That $79 price was super low for a 6-inch E Ink reader back in 2011 and helped make the Kindle much more of a mass-market device.
Advertising Was Part of the Deal
The cheaper Kindle displayed what Amazon called “Special Offers and Sponsored Screensavers.” When the Kindle went to sleep, instead of the traditional author portraits and decorative screensavers, you might see an advertisement.
There was also a small sponsored area at the bottom of the home/library screen. Ads did not appear inside the book while you were actually reading.
Some of the early promotions were actually substantial coupons rather than ordinary ads. Amazon offered things such as discounted Amazon gift cards, cheap Audible books, discounted MP3 albums, and deals on other products.
The Device
Deliberately stripped down compared with the Kindle Keyboard. It kept the 6-inch Pearl E Ink display, but Amazon eliminated the physical QWERTY keyboard.
6-inch E Ink Pearl screen
About 5.98 ounces. Roughly 30% lighter than the Kindle Keyboard
About 18% smaller
2 GB internal storage
Around one month of battery life under Amazon’s stated conditions. No touchscreen. No cellular 3G version of this basic model. No physical keyboard. No audio output, which also meant no text-to-speech or MP3 playback
This Kindle was arguably one of the turning points in e-reader history. A few years earlier, the original Kindle had launched for $399. Now Amazon had pushed a competent E Ink reader below $80, partly because advertising subsidized the hardware.
It also established a business model Amazon continued for many later Kindles: pay less for a Kindle with lock-screen advertising, or pay more to remove the ads.
Fun historical detail: When Amazon launched Special Offers, it didn't present the advertisements as an unfortunate compromise. It marketed them almost like an additional Kindle feature.
Some early deals really were good enough that customers deliberately bought the Special Offers version for access to them.
Amazon said the Special Offers Kindle quickly became its bestselling Kindle model.
Visually, the Kindle 4 is pretty distinctive now. It's is probably one of the simplest-looking physical-button Kindles Amazon ever made.
This price drop must be part of the reason why my Dad bought one of these ad supported kindle 4's way back when. He used it for a little while before he finally got a smartphone through work I think. At some point he took that kindle to work and left it in a drawer for years.
About a year ago, I saw this video about kindle jailbreaking (the dammit jeff one if you are familiar) and decided I wanted to give it a shot since I love jailbreaking old game consoles. I asked him about it and he brought it home from work. I had to charge it up for a while to get it to turn on, but it seems like the original battery is still going strong after 15 years.
Once I got KOreader working on it, having a dedicated eink reader has had me reading more than I have since elementary school. Not having a keyboard (either physical or touchscreen) is a bit annoying, but I will probably use this kindle until nobody makes replacement batteries for it anymore... At that point I'll buy something more open source and not made by Amazon.
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