New Amazon Kindles imminent – and with surprising new colour options, too

Amazon could be preparing to launch the latest version of the Kindle, with leaked images showing off new colours and new design. But it's not quite clear what we're looking at.

The images have surfaced thanks to WinFuture. They appear to be product images, some in a lifestyle setting, typical of the sort of things we see on Amazon's Kindle pages.

They are presented as the Kindle 12th Generation, with WinFuture saying that there appears to be two E Ink display versions here. But this raises more questions than answers, so let's dive into it.

Thanks to these images we see a light blue, black, purple and green Kindle, so that's a full range of colours. The incumbent model offers Black and Macha for the base Kindle, while the Paperwhite comes in Black, Jade and Raspberry.

Firstly, the offering of four colours for the base model (which is what this is suggested to be) piqued my interest. It's a doubling of the options for Amazon's cheapest model.

There are a couple of other design changes too: the corners of the E Ink display are rounded, rather than squared as they have been on previous models for the entry-level version, but more importantly, the power button appears on the side of the device, towards the top of the right-hand side.

That's a significant change and while some will see it as innocuous, it addresses a long-running Kindle problem. Previously, you couldn't rest a Kindle on a table when reading, because you'd depress the power button and the device would turn off. This neatly addresses the issue and it's long overdue.

But the other thing worth noting is that most of these devices appear to have a flush display. This has previously been reserved for devices above the entry level, which had a bevelled edge to its recessed display on previous iterations.

The flush design is aesthetically cleaner and I much prefer it - but again, if this is the base model, it's a big change.

Finally, with the shots of the back, it's clear that the design is radically different. Kindle has, through many iterations, had a soft curve into the back from the edges of the device. The new design shows wider and flatter edges - presumably to support the new button location - resulting in a flatter back.

This can be clearly seen in some of the lifestyle images. There's a metallic sheen to it too, although I think that's likely to be a paint effect. The only metal Kindle so far has been the Oasis (now discontinued, but definitely one of the best Kindle designs ever), the Voyage and the Scribe.

Which is where we reach the point of design inspiration: it looks like the Kindle Scribe is the new template for Kindle design, as this leaked model adopts much of what the Kindle Scribe Colorsoft started.

Whether there are two different models shown here as the source stipulates is hard to verify, but it looks like some have shadowing around the E Ink display area suggesting it is slightly recessed. But the images are mixed and some are definitely a lower resolution. There's a chance that this is the Kindle 12th Gen and the Kindle Paperwhite 13th Gen, but with no details about the size or the technical specifications, it's difficult to know.

It's likely that Amazon will update the E Ink panel to make it faster and clearer, while also adjusting the front illumination.

As for when these devices will launch, we currently don't know. Amazon has traditionally launched devices at a September or October event in recent years, but that hasn't happened this year. There's every chance that these devices will be announced in the coming weeks, but that's not confirmed.