First of all, I know this is not the kind of questions that usually are done in asklemmy but I don’t know where to ask, sorry folks.
It’s a 5th generation kindle and I really loved reading on it. :(
Bonus question if the kindle is doomed: best e-ink reader on the cheaper side? I don’t want anything super powerful or fancy, I just want to load my collection with calibre and read on it. - bonus points if it’s a libre and or open source friendly.
It’s possible the connector to the screen is just loose. As a last-ditch effort, you could try to repair it. See if ifixit has a guide to taking your kindle apart. It should be easier than a phone since there’s no waterproof sealing.
The connector probably looks like this:
Just reseating it could fix your screen. Just make sure to be careful with whatever little black tab locks the ribbon cable in place. Some flip up while others slide out and they are notoriously delicate if you pull them the wrong way.
If that doesn’t work, plenty of eBay sellers offer replacement screens. I know this because my job had a bunch of left over e-ink displays from a product we were developing. They happened to be the ones used in the Kindle XL and I hocked them on eBay to a repair shop.
I used to use kindles when I was growing up, as my dad and grandpa had large amazon libraries I was able to read from. It started with the keyboard kindles up to one of the touch e-ink ones and with the exception of the last one, every one of them had the screen fail.
I have since switched to a kobo clara 2e BW, using books loaded from calibre. the price point was comfortable, with more features than I expected (waterproof, bluetooth and wifi, ability to sign directly into library accounts), I was also happy with battery life, I read on planes/trains to pass the time and had a two week long trip where I was doing a lot of traveling by train and I didn’t need to charge at all.
I plug into my computer and load books manually I also have been looking towards doing something OTA for books and page sync, libre and self hosted.
I have the same model and I just replaced the battery. There are videos on YouTube to get it open. It’s very achievable for someone without a lot of experience repairing their own electronics.
There is also a jailbreak for this model’s latest firmware which allows you to read your books with Koreader if you don’t want to wait to upgrade to a FOSS friendlier device.
Sounds like the screen is cracked. They are so brittle
Screen is probably broken. You might be able to replace it by buying a replacement screen and following a guide by ifixit. Usually pretty straightforward.
