The Kindle 4 Is Most Comfortably Held Upside-Down For Men

Edit: In the original version of this post, I called this a Kindle 3. Brain fart. Sorry about that!

My parents kindly bought me a Kindle 4 for Christmas. It’s the new, small, light one. No touch, no 3G. Simple.

I love it for many reasons, but have struggled to turn pages comfortably. My thumb just wasn’t able to press the side buttons easily. (Ah, First World Problems.)

Today, I realized why I was struggling: The Kindle is designed for women’s hands.1 And those hands are typically smaller than a man’s.

Then my mind leaped to a memory: while checking out the Kindle’s orientation options, I saw an upside-downmode. I’d wondered at the time, Why would anyone want to use a Kindle upside-down? The answer was now obvious.

Kindle side-by-side

I set the Kindle to upside-downmode. Voila! I can now turn pages with complete ease. Success!


1 (Do you think my assertion that the Kindle’s “designed for women” is crazy? Go to the Kindle product page. Every person shown on the page–even the disembodied hands–are female. Who do you think they’re advertising to?)

24 responses to “The Kindle 4 Is Most Comfortably Held Upside-Down For Men”

  1. mistrbrownstone

    “(Do you think my assertion that the Kindle’s “designed for women” is crazy? Go to the Kindle product page. Every person shown on the page–even the disembodied hands–are female. Who do you think they’re advertising to?)”
    Who do I think they are advertising to?

    I’d say they are advertising to the men: http://i.imgur.com/jcS3G.jpg

  2. BrentNewhall

    Ha! Fair point.

  3. someguy

    At the amazon page, the ad photo displays sample text from this romance novel about a
    middle-aged woman yearning for her first love. (Kindle = sexy time, right?) http://www.amazon.com/Be-Sung-Underwater-Novel/dp/0316127396

    1. Anon

      explains left and right hand button groups…

  4. neuromonkey

    Disembodied hands are sooo hot.

  5. Sky

    That is a Kindle 4 in your pictures.

    1. BrentNewhall

      Yep, thanks for the feedback. Fixed.

  6. Miguel

    You’ve got a Kindle 4, not a 3.

    1. BrentNewhall

      Whoops! You’re absolutely right. Thanks for the note! Fixed.

  7. Steff

    Sine the kindle is a dedicated reader, and statistically more women than men buy books, what exactly did you expect?  Do you think Amazon should still cater to men since they are the center of the universe or something?
    Speaking as a woman with small hands, I run across the controls for
    things just that more far apart than comfortable as standard,
    so welcome to my world.

    1. Cheese_Master

      That sounds unnecessarily confrontational. He saw a problem with the device and found a way to make it work better than him. There’s nothing sexist about that, so don’t try to make it out like it is. 

    2. CO

      It wasn’t an insult, he was stating the facts.  Don’t be so sensitive.

      1. Asdf

        The problem is he’s not stating a fact.  On the very link he provides, one of the frontpage images is:

        http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/kindle/tequila/dp/KT-slate-05-lg._V166940136_.jpg

        Sorry, that’s a man’s hand

    3. Anonymous

      Why won’t Chrome translate this post to English for me?

    4. Don't take me too seriously

      That’s not what he said at all; why are you inventing this straw man of a question implying he thinks Amazon should “cater to men since they are the center of the universe”?

      He actually did the opposite and found a way that the current device can be used more comfortably. Maybe if you find “controls for things … more far apart than comfortable” you should be equally inventive and try to solve the problem, it seems you are the one expecting to be catered for – not Brent.

      1. Richard Alan Merritt

        “My world”/center of the universe”, just sounds like this person is projecting insecurities/delusions of grandeur  on a blog…..

    5. Elmer Gantry

      Get back in the kitchen

      1. MMT

        So, you think Steff is being unnecessarily sensitive about a gender issue, and you respond by being the sort of sexist pig that causes women to be sensitive about gender issues? Brilliant.

        1. Richard Alan Merritt

          It’s classic trolling. no more…no less.

    6. Richard Alan Merritt

      As if you had a world to yourself.

  8. Anonymous

    Good thinkin!

  9. sanbikinoraion

    Ever seen T3 magazine? (
    http://images.google.com/images?q=t3+magazine&biw=1520&bih=835&sei=2t_-TtLgHZCLhQfxg6y5AQ) — who do you think they are advertizing to, men or women…? Women are the face (and in this case, I guess, hands) of advertizing everywhere so I don’t think you can draw much of a conclusion from that alone.

  10. Jeff

    Wrt your footnote, http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/kindle/tequila/dp/KT-aag-04._V166741203_.jpg seems to depict a man putting the Kindle into his suit jacket… 

  11. iTechCode

    Just Awesome. Really. Thanks For Info.

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