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Kindle 3 Freezing: How To Handle The Problem

By Best-eReaders, September 09, 2010

The Kindle 3 is having some freezing issues. This is characterized by the Kindle rebooting itself. Sometimes, the screen just goes blank and you need to reboot the device yourself.

Different people say different situations cause their Kindle 3 to freeze. There’s no discernible pattern to the crashes, so let’s take a look at some common situations. Kindle 3 freezing happens to some –

- when they press the “Return” key after viewing the dictionary definition of a word.
- when strolling up and down a page using the 5-wheel button.
- when selecting a book on the home page.
- when pressing the ‘Menu’ button.
- during a book download.
- when highlighting and annotating a .doc document (it seems to work for a while, then the Kindle 3 freezes).

- while you’re browsing the Amazon store over WiFi.

- when turning a page.

Not all Kindle 3 owners have trouble with their Kindle, but apparently there’s a significant number of people who have experienced Kindle 3 freezing.  Amazon has acknowledged the problem, too, and is, in fact, currently working on a solution. A beta version of the firmware update (3.0.1) is being offered by Amazon for testing. One reported that after receiving the update, his Kindle 3 no longer has a screen freeze issue.

There’s no official word from the company yet when the final firmware update will become available for broad rollout. For now, you can download the preview-release of the software update. If it doesn’t and you’re still waiting for Amazon’s official fix, how do you handle Kindle 3 freezing?  Here are tips on how to minimize or avoid it:.

1. The Kindle 3 tend to freeze when you do a lot of things simultaneously, such as when you download several books from the Amazon store or Archive at the same time or when you open several websites at the same time. Freezing caused by book downloads might be an indexing issue; the system is unable to handle multiple downloads at a time. Try not downloading or moving several books at once, or visiting multiple sites at the same time.
2. If it happens when you do things in rapid succession, such as when you click the page turn button too many times and very quickly one after the other, the freezing might be caused by system memory problem.      
3. It often happens when moving books to Collections. The problem seems to lie in Collections itself; it seems the only way to prevent your computer is by avoiding use of Collections until Amazon has released a firmware fix.
4. It sometimes happens when you access the dictionary. Underlying cause might be the same with doing one thing quickly after the other, as though there’s a race condition between the cursor movement and the loading of the dictionary box. Again, the Kindle might be unable to process commands made in rapid succession. 
5. When you highlight too many, the Kindle 3 tends to crash, too. Limit your highlights.    

 
6. When you use WiFi to browse the web or download books, the Kindle tends to freeze. The problem might be with the WiFi setup. If you have Kindle 3G, use the 3G instead. 
7. When you open a PDF document, the device freezes. The crashing might be caused by the PDF document or the PDF reader might not have enough memory to load all PDFs. What you can do is avoid downloading too many PDFs. If you have too many PDFs, delete some of those that are not really important.   

In case you encounter a Kindle 3 Freeze:

If your Kindle crashes, do a hard reset by holding the power switch for 15 to 30 seconds or until the device restarts. You can report the problem

to Amazon Kindle Customer Support:

For customers inside the US, toll free line is 1-866-321-8851
For customers outside the US, hotline is 1-206-266-0927
For customers in the UK, toll free line is 0800-496-2449. 

Most of those who reported problems with their Kindle got a replacement within a day. You can also download Amazon’s early preview-release of firmware upgrade from the Amazon website.