Kindle EOL 5/20/2026 announcement questions
I know this is kinda old news at this point, but I have a Kindle 4th generation non-touch that I would like to keep using for the foreseeable future. I already jailbroke it and enjoy sideloading .epub books over WiFi using calibre to read with koreader.
Ever since the EOL announcement from Amazon, I have kept my kindle in airplane mode out of paranoia, mainly due to the ominous phrase "If you deregister or factory reset these devices, you will not be able to re-register or use these devices in any way." I know that this is probably not necessarily true for older devices since I'm pretty sure you can skip Amazon account registration in the setup but it is still concerningly vague phrasing.
Because I set my device in airplane mode, I cannot use WiFi sync with calibre or pull up wikipedia articles like I used to. I really want to turn WiFi back on to get these features back. Has anyone heard of Amazon pushing an update or something that actually removes books or breaks homebrew apps? I am aware they don't have the greatest track record for doing the right thing in this regard.
Also, is it possible to set up my kindle or my network so that it can only access wikipedia, my local LAN, and koreader update servers? This may ease my worries about keeping my kindle's WiFi on.
I believe that my Kindle is a 4th generation as well, but it strikes me as odd when I read your phrasing about the WiFi sync, so I’ll just expand on my use case, since I don’t use Calibre to sync.
The way I was able to sync was via email or uploading via web or using the Windows app (at work, because I don’t use Windows at home). It’s very likely that Calibre accomplishes exactly the same thing, but I don’t remember since sending via email was more convenient for me.
If it’s any help, it’s non-touch, without backlight. Two buttons on the left, two on the right, power at the bottom, and the 5-way selector on the front (lower middle).
That being said, I kept WiFi turned on throughout the EOL phase. The shutdown actually happened a couple of days later in my case.
I stopped being able to receive books via email, and the “farthest page read” stopped syncing between devices (I sometimes read a few pages from my phone). At this point I decided to turn on the airplane mode, mostly to save battery (and because I have no further use for WiFi at this point).
The device still works. And while I haven’t tried it yet (because I emailed myself a ton of books before the EOL), Amazon claims I should still be able to sideload books using USB.
I assumed that part about deregistering refers to the sort of factory reset you’re able to do. As one would do if selling it.
I never jailbroke mine, but I doubt it’s relevant at this point.
For me, it’s just as if I didn’t have WiFi.
I’m usually slow to respond, but feel free to ask if there’s something else I can add.
Good to know you didn't experience any issues beyond send to kindle not working anymore. I was concerned because in the past, a different large company (Nintendo) sent out software updates trying to stifle 3DS homebrew years after they stopped pushing updates for the console.
To clarify my use case, I set up an ebook library with calibre on my PC, and I can sync the books in that library over my local WiFi network (aka my LAN) to a kindle that had the correct homebrew software installed. In my case, that is koreader. It makes it easier than using a USB cable to do the same syncing for two reasons: first, you don't need to plug in a cable. Second, with the way the homebrew software works, you can only transfer files via USB when you are using the kindle's native OS. This means I have to exit koreader and wait for it to reboot every time I want to sync with a cable. Using network sync avoids this issue.
The other thing I use WiFi for on my kindle is to access wikipedia. Some of the books I read are older, and sometimes I want to highlight a confusing word and search wikipedia without picking up my phone (this is a function of koreader).
I actually never used Amazon's send to kindle email service. My kindle used to be my Dad's, but I didn't start using it until recently. It's still registered with his account, but the send to kindle functionality hasn't been used on my kindle in years.
On the subject of sending Amazon books to kindle via USB, I don't think any Amazon books can be synced to either of our devices anymore, even with a cable. The main reason they discontinued support for these kindles in the first place is because they were incompatible with new ebook DRM schemes. The DRM compatible with these is trivial to crack. DRM free files not from Amazon should work however.
Perhaps I should ask these questions in the Kindle modding community on lemmy or on the mobileread forums. They might know more about this.
I think odds are looking very good, but you’re right. It’s worth asking in the modding communities first.
Good luck!
Oh. There’s 4 more buttons on the front that I forgot about: back, keyboard, menu, and home