A key feature from Amazon's Kindle has been removed: What you need to know

A key feature of Amazon's widely popular e-reader, the Kindle, is being removed from the device. It is reported by Tech Radar that those using older devices will not be able to purchase books from the Kindle Store shortly.

As of now, the company has begun implementing this change that it announced back in May. According to the outlet, the affected Kindle models are the fourth- and fifth-generation models released in 2011 and 2012. 

A spokesperson for the company stated that this change will not render the devices obsolete, as books can be delivered to these devices once they have been purchased from a website or other devices.

As reported by Tech Radar, users can find out their exact Kindle model number via the settings menu from the device's menu, within the Device Info section.

 As long as the older models aren't too old, they can still be used to receive emails, PDFs, and other files with no problem, and the process works flawlessly just the same.

The exact reason for Amazon's decision is unknown at this time, but Good e-Reader has speculated that the discontinuation could be caused by an incompatibility between Transport Layer Security and the products being sold by Amazon.

The older devices support TLS 1.0 and 1.1, which have several flaws. These older e-readers are not able to support newer versions of TLS due to hardware limitations associated with them.

As of June, Amazon announced that, in the next year, it would cease providing its Kindle e-readers and Kindle e-books in China to retailers and shut down its Kindle e-bookstore in the country.

As a result of the decision made by a US tech company to remove the Kindle China e-bookstore from the restrictive Chinese market on June 30, next year, ebooks will no longer be sold there.

 As the company had stated on its official WeChat account, customers will have the opportunity to continue downloading any books they have purchased for an additional year after purchase.