Kindle Scribe getting a major upgrade to bring it up to Scribe 2 standards

Amazon announced four new Kindle models in October 2024, the biggest Kindle refresh so far in the history of the E-Ink devices. While many of the headlines were taken by the Kindle Colorsoft – the first Kindle to offer a colour display – a lot of attention was on the Scribe 2, too. And now it seems those with the original Scribe will also benefit from some of the changes.

The Kindle Scribe 2 isn’t a huge departure from the previous Kindle Scribe that was announced in 2022. The most noticeable physical difference is that it now has a white border around the screen, designed to expand the edges of the page slightly to give more of a paper-like aesthetic to proceedings.

That’s something you’re obviously not going to get on your existing Scribe, but fortunately, when it comes to software, you’re in luck – the existing Scribe will be getting some of the fancy new features of the Kindle Scribe 2.

According to Good E-Reader, the Kindle Scribe will get a software update in “early 2025” that will bring the Scribe 2’s headline features to the older hardware. That will include Active Canvas, Extended Margin and the ability to use AI summaries on your Notebooks.

Explaining the Kindle Scribe 2’s new features

While much of the Kindle Scribe 2 remains the same as the original model – it’s the same overall size, shape and design – the biggest changes come to the software experience. This will enhance the way that notes can be taken, allowing greater flexibility in annotations.

Currently, if you want to annotate an e-book, that will appear as a sticky note. The new Active Canvas function will allow e-books to flow around your notes. Those notes are then anchored in place, so they’re always where you expect them to be, regardless of text resizing.

If you don’t want the notes in your text, you can use Extended Margin, which as the name suggests, will let you drag out a margin so you have an area to write on. These features are going to be great for students, for example.

The final new feature that the Scribe 2 offers that the original Scribe will benefit from is AI. In this instance, AI can take your handwritten notes and convert them into a script font. This looks like handwriting, but is nice, tidy and organised. AI will also let you summarise the notes that you take – and then you can drop that summary into the start of a notebook, so you’ll have your summary, nicely written, as well as all the original notes that you took.

The best thing is that while the Scribe 2 is currently on pre-order, you can buy the original Kindle Scribe at a lower price, safe in the knowledge that it will be getting updated with the latest features in the near future.

Maybe that should be your next Black Friday purchase?