Picture of the recently announced Amazon Kindle Fire in New York City by Jeff Bezos. Credit: Amazon Via Bloomberg.
After an intense back and forth buzzing on the Internet about an Amazon tablet, this morning, Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s CEO gave us the hard facts. Mr. Bezos, following the showmanship of his peer Steve Jobs, proudly announced its new Kindle Fire, a 7-inch Android-based slate that will cost $199. Many pundits commented that the consumer tablet is an evolved e-reader.
The Fire has an IPS display with 169 pixels-per-inch resolution. Super-tough Gorilla Glass protects the screen, which can support the display of 16 million colors. Inside, the Fire comes loaded with a dual-core processor, and the device weighs just 14.6 ounces. As expected, the Fire closely resembles the BlackBerry PlayBook.
The Kindle Fire runs on a highly-customized version of the Android operating system. Kindle Fire customers will receive a 30-day trial of Amazon Prime, which gives subscribers access to the company’s movie and TV streaming library and free two-day shipping on products purchased through Amazon.com.
Amazon has also loaded the device with a custom “Amazon Silk” browser, which CEO Jeff Bezos calls a “split” browser, meaning it gets half its computing power from the device, and the other half from Amazon’s EC2 cloud computing servers. It’s unusual that a company would come up with its own browser for one of its gadgets. I don’t recall having seen this done before.
Amazon’s newest tablet can connect to the Internet via a Wi-Fi connection only. It doesn’t have 3G connectivity, nor does it have a camera—two features available on most tablets, including a variety of iPad models. Despite the lack of these features, the Kindle Fire costs less than half the price of the least expensive iPad 2, which runs $499 and does not have 3G connectivity either.
Jeff Bezos also added two new Kindles to its arsenal (e.g., the Kindle Touch and the Kindle Touch 3G). The Kindle Touch is a touchscreen e-reader, with Amazon’s traditional E-Ink display. A Wi-Fi-only version will sell for $99. The second model, called the Kindle Touch 3G, includes 3G connectivity and will have a price tag of $149—slightly cheaper than the Amazon Fire tablet. With such a close difference, I’m sure many will cough out the extra fifty bucks and light the Fire. The standard Kindle will now cost less; its new price is a mere $79. I’m sure this is raising a few eyebrows in the e-books industry; specially Barnes & Nobles which carries the Nook Color, very similar to Amazon’s Fire.
The Fire tablet comes with 8GB internal storage, and no SD card slot for additional storage. Stereo speakers are embedded on top of the device. The gadget is ideal for holding up to approximately 18 million songs, movies, TV shows, books, magazines, apps, and games.
Bezos explained that pre-order for the Kindle Fire starts today, with deliveries of the device to begin on November 15, just in time for the holiday season. According to Bezos, Amazon is “building premium products at non-premium prices.” I think it’s a catchy phrase.
Even as we speak, many technophiles are already imagining a Fire under their Christmas tree. Reality of just day dreaming? What do you think? Good Day and happy shopping.
