The hot news story this week (which I assume will be officially announced next Tuesday) is that Amazon’s new Kindle will sport a 6.8″ screen.

Reddit users have discovered that Amazon’s sites in Mexico and elsewhere are now showing references to a new Paperwhite Signature edition. According to the leaked specs, the device sports a flush-mounted 6.8″ E-ink screen. I don’t have the actual resolution yet, but we do know it has 300 PPI, and according to the leak it will ship with either 8GB or 32GB storage.

That’s twice or more the storage of the 6″ Paperwhite, and the new device will also have more LEDs in the frontlight (17 LEDS vs 4). Those extra LEDs are there to give the screen a color-changing frontlight like the one found on competing ereaders and the Kindle Oasis.

The new model will also feature wireless charging, and are rated as meeting the IPX8 waterproofing standard. US and international prices are currently unknown, but the Canadian prices suggest that this model will cost $45 CAD and $105 CAD more than the 6″ paperwhite.

When I first heard about this leak, I assumed that Amazon would announce the new Kindle tomorrow (Amazon likes to launch hardware on Tuesdays). But we also know that Amazon has a big hardware event scheduled for next Tuesday, and there’s a good chance that Amazon will be announcing the new Kindle Paperwhite then.

It has been some three years since Amazon last released a new Paperwhite, and two years since they released the Oasis. It has been so long since the last launch that one could honestly have expected Amazon to retire the hardware entirely. Or at least that was the case until last week. The release of a new Kindle firmware hinted at the idea that we could see a new Kindle launch sooner or later, and I can now report that it will be the former.