Amazon reveals first color Kindle, new Kindle Scribe, and more

Physical page buttons have a small UX disadvantage in that your finger must be located at the button when its time to turn the page. Unlike the soft method where you gently tap screen with finger or pen, and you're not limited to one activation location. So, more energy required with the physical button.

I was disappointed at first the Scribe didn't have buttons, but now I don't care.

On the other hand, touchscreen page turn has several UX disadvantages.

- You have to move the position of your thumb/hand for every page turn (to the screen, and back off of it). I disagree with "more energy required with the physical button"

- You have to obstruct text with your thumb/hand to turn the page

- It's very easy to accidentally turn the page by grazing the edge of the screen while you're reading

It's the opposite - with a physical button, you just put your finger on it and keep it there while reading, so that you only need to push slightly to get to the next page. Whereas with touch screen you need to actively move your finger back and forth every time (since keeping it there would block the screen, and in any case you can't really rest it on a capacitive screen without it registering as a touch).

For one-handed reading especially, that alone makes physical buttons significantly more ergonomic, provided that they're placed such that your thumb rests on them naturally when holding the device.

If any device with physical buttons didn't also support screen touch as well, this would be an issue, but that's not the case; every competitor device with buttons also fully supports screen touch, so you get both!