We had been hearing about the Amazon tablet
for quite some time. The rumor mill has been put to rest after
yesterday’s event in New York. The Amazon Kindle Fire, yes that’s what
it is called, is the addition to the updated Kindle
lineup. The Fire is the most expensive device in the Kindle range now,
with the updated Kindle being the most inexpensive. The Kindle Touch and
the Kindle 3G are the mid-range devices.
Here is what the Kindle Fire has to offer.
When is it finally available? What is the price?
The U.S. release date is 15 November
2011, but no confirmation on the India availability. The U.S. price is
$199. But then again, you might just order this from one of the global
shopping sites and not wait for the “official” India launch.
If you are one of the impatient ones,
you may well go and pre-book this at ShopYourWorld.com. We have seen
pre-bookings go live at
http://amazonin.tarazz.com/Kindle-Color-Multi-touch-Display-Wi-Fi/dp/B0051VVOB2
Weighty Issues
Amazon says the Fire is “small and light
enough to hold in just one hand and carry everywhere you go”. Well,
decide for yourselves. The weight is 413 grams and the dimensions are
190 mm x 120 mm x 11.4 mm.
The Kindle Fire Display
It has a 7-inch IPS panel with a
resolution of 1024 x 600 pixels. And this is the Gorilla Glass version
as well. We had heard rumours that the Amazon tablet will be a 10-inch
one, but it isn't, at least at the moment. Don’t bet against that for
the inevitable 2012 update though.
Processor Power
Few details available about this one,
but what we know is that it has the ARM derived OMAP chipset from Texas
Instruments with a 1GHz dual core processor. More details are awaited.
The Operating System
This one falls in the Android tablet
category, but is a heavily customized for Amazon version of the Android
2.0 series. This is not an Android 3.0-based OS version.
Why this has been done is to bring the
Amazon services on the center stage- Cloud Player, Cloud Drive and the
Kindle e-book feature.
Amazon Silk
No, it is not a new clothing line from
Amazon! This is the name of the new web browser that comes in the Kindle
Fire. This one will connect to the Amazon EC2 computer cluster, most
likely to increase browsing speeds by compression. Opera has been doing
this for a long time on their web browser. The Silk, over a period of
time, remembers which web pages you visit most often, and preloads them.
Connectivity on the Fire
This is a watered down version of what
would have been a full-fledged tablet. And it shows in the fact that the
Fire has Wi-Fi connectivity but no 3G. Maybe that will be arriving with
the next update of the device.
Storage Space
There is 8GB built-in storage in the Fire. No slot for expansion via a memory card though.
Preloaded Apps
Amazon will bundle quite a few apps on
this tablet. Facebook and Twitter, the inevitable ones. Beyond that, the
U.S. version will also get Netflix and Pandora. We are sure the
non-U.S. versions of the tablet wont get these apps. Interesting to see
of Amazon substitutes with some locally available (by that we mean
regionally) services, or just forgets about that altogether. Also
bundled is the Amazon Cloud Storage.
Enhanced Whisper sync
If you have been using the Kindle e-book
service, you would know what this is. For those who don’t, this feature
allows you to synchronize all your purchased and downloaded content to
be synced to every device you have signed in from. The Fire will come
with the enhanced version of this feature, that’ll extend this to
downloaded movies and TV shows as well.
No Android Market
This is not surprising at all. Amazon’s own Appstore for Android
had been working out for this day, for quite some time. The Fire does
away with Android Market, and replaced that with its own application
store. How that pans out in the long run is a question, but Amazon may
just make up for that US$50 loss for every Fire sold by charging for
apps that may essentially be free on Android Market.
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