Text-to-Speech Voice Found on the Kindle Oasis
When the first Kindle Oasis leaks and the FCC paperwork which showed that the $290 Oasis had Bluetooth, many hoped that was a sign that it would support audio through a BT speaker.
Now Amazon has just raised that from a hope to a strong probability. SelfPublisherBibel.de reports this morning that they found a folder on their Kindle Oasis which was named "Voice". Inside that folder they found a text-to-speech voice called "Salli".
For those who don’t have a Fire tablet at hand, Salli is the default TTS voice for Amazon’s tablets in the US market. It’s the one that Amazon updated about a month back, and its presence on the Oasis is a strong indicator that it will support audio in the near future.
Coincidentally, the Oasis already has its first firmware update (see Amazon’s website for more details).
And in related news, the Kindle Oasis owner’s thread over on MobileRead has confirmed that Ember is a font option. It replaced the Open Dyslexic font. Also, contrary to earlier reports there is no USB port on the case.
If the TTS option does come to pass then the Oasis will be the first new Kindle with text-to-speech since the Kindle Touch,which was released in 2011. Some have been agitating ever since then for Amazon to add TTS to the Kindle, and now they could be getting their wish.
Speaking of which, how do you suppose Amazon will support audio on the Oasis?
Unlike the first four generations of Kindles it has no speaker or headphone jack, so Amazon is either going to have to enable Bluetooth, or release a case with an integrated speaker.
The latter option is less likely given the cost of the case, but it is not impossible.
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