Jailbreaking my partner’s 2018 Kindle Paperwhite 4

After asking for recommendations for a new e-reader I did some searching and realise that the Kindle may have been more repairable than I actually thought. I found a guide for how to open it up and replace the screen and found an ad online for someone selling a reader of the same model as mine with a working display but damaged touch input. I thought that perhaps I could separate the display and touch surface of the screen and mix and match parts to keep my one going. This ran into two problems: The first is that the different components of the screen seem to be thoroughly glued together, so if I wanted to replace the broken display I would have get a fully functioning replacement screen and the one with the working display but broken touch input would not be suitable, and the second and larger problem is that I fucked up while trying to remove the screen and ripped a ribbon cable connector off of the board, breaking it in a way that would be very, very difficulty to repair at home unless I got much, much better at precise soldering than I currently am.

But then I remembered that my girlfriend had their own old Kindle lying around unused and I asked could I simply take that and load my own books onto it instead, which they kindly acquiesced to. It’s a Paperwhite 4, as oppossed to my Paperwhite 1, and there is a noticably improvement in screen quality. I am not going to be writing up another jailbreaking guide as this time I was able to find an existing straightforward one that worked for me on first try thanks to the Kindle Modding Wiki’s jailbreaking wizard, which pointed me towards and then guided me through the Winter Break 2 jailbreaking process.

I’d also like to mention that as well as the Kobo and XTEink e-readers that I mentioned in my last post, someone also pointed me towards Diptyx which also looks up my alley. But the best and least wasteful tool to use it the one that you already have, so I will stick with my girlfriend’s Kindle until I accidentally break it as well, which hopefully won’t be for a long time.