Every since getting my Kindle 3 for Christmas I have mysterious lockups, restarts, etc. It has been driving me bonkers, especially since it kept losing my page in the book. It seemed to be reverting to a previous state all the time, and I couldn’t figure out why.
So I emailed Amazon support. Their response was that I should be hitting the “Home” button every time I wanted to stop reading. Talk about an awful answer, so I emailed them again and said that was an unacceptable answer and that it needed to be fixed.
I received a similar response back.
Then the day after sending those emails my Kindle was completely locked. I couldn’t get it out of sleep (no green light when you slide the power button). I tried to hold down the power button, but apparently not long enough. I called Amazon and they basically had me hold it down longer. At least I was able to use it then.
I also noticed that it happened more in the cold. For example, when it just sat around my house I never had a problem, but whenever I went into work with it (barring it to the colder outside) it would always lose my spot and restart.
Well, it turns out that they symptoms were correct, but my correlation to why it was happening was not. Turns out it wasn’t because it was cold out, it was because it was getting jostled around more when I was carrying it than when it sat at home. I am not the only one that is having this issue. It is all because of the Kindle Cover – Without A Light.
One of the new things they’ve done is created a cover that draws power from your kindle (lighted cover). It is pretty slick because the hinge is metal, which plugs into the Kindle, makes contact with a electrical pad, and powers the light. However, the cover without a light also has a metallic binding, but there is no where for the charge to go and so it just shorts out causing the Kindle to do all sorts of strange things.
It looks as though Amazon is now aware of the issue as all Amazon branded non-light covers are now not being sold. However, any other non-light cover that has the Amazon binding seems to be having the same issue (the Kate Spade and Timbuktu covers too). It should be an easy fix for them, just make the binding some sort of ABS plastic, but talk about a huge oversight. I mean, common sense.
Back to my story, I’ve since put packaging tape (thinest tape I could find) over the bottom hook of my binding, and today I haven’t had a restart. I’ll probably update this story in a few weeks one way or the other.
Update:
After using the cover with the fix for 3 weeks, I can attest that the tape fixed the issue. No more reboots means lots of carefree reading!
Update #2:
Over two months later, and still no reboots. Consider it fixed!