Amazon on Thursday heated up the tablet competition with the introduction of new Kindle Fire HD tablets, including a model with LTE capabilities and another model with an 8.9" screen that can display images at a resolution of 1920×1200 pixels.
?The Kindle Fire HD will also be available in a 7" model and the tablets will have storage starting at 16Gb, said Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, during an event in Santa Monica, California. ??The 8.9" Kindle HD tablet will be priced at $299 for 16Gb of storage, and will be available on 20 November in the US. The 7" Kindle Fire HD model will be priced at £159 in the UK and and ship on 25 October.??The Kindle Fire HD 4G LTE wireless with 32Gb of storage will be available for $499, and also ship in the US on 20 November. An annual data plan provides 250Mb of data transfers per month and 20Gb of storage in the cloud.
The company did not clarify the screen size of the Kindle Fire HD LTE model.??The new Kindle Fire HD devices bring new features, including a larger screen, more storage and mobile broadband capabilities, compared to the original Kindle Fire, which was announced in September last year with a 7" screen. The new devices have a faster processor and a front-facing camera, which was not available in the original Kindle Fire.??The 8.9" Kindle Fire HD (pictured) is 8.8mm thick and will weigh 566g.
It runs on a Texas Instruments OMAP4470 dual-core ARM processor, which is based on the Cortex-A9 design. The device operates on a dual Wi-Fi range, giving it faster wireless networking than Google’s Nexus 7 tablet, according to Bezos.??The new devices also have a HDMI port so the tablets can be connected to high definition TV sets.??The Kindle Fire tablets now have Microsoft Exchange integration.
A new email client offers support for Google’s Gmail, Microsoft’s Exchange and Hotmail. ??The new tablets also have features like X-ray, where information about actors is shown on-screen when a movie is playing. A new feature called FreeTime sets time limits for different types of content activity. For example, the new feature can set the amount of time that kids can play games during a day. ??Amazon has also re-priced the original Kindle Fire to £129 in the UK, with more RAM and a faster processor.
?The first Kindle Fire became Amazon’s most successful product, and in its first year the device captured 22% of US tablet sales, according to the company.??The original Kindle Fire attracted members of US-only Amazon Prime, which offers instant movie and TV show streaming as one of the benefits. At $79 a year, Amazon Prime members get access to 25,000 movies and TV episodes for instant streaming to the Kindle tablet at no additional cost. ??
Amazon earlier this week struck a major deal with movie studio Epix, which adds thousands of movies to Amazon’s movie library, including popular titles such as The Avengers and The Hunger Games. The Amazon Prime Instant Video service in total offers 120,000 movies and TV episodes.
The company also added video content from ESPN and Warner Bros. Domestic Television Distribution over the past few months, and opened a new Appstore in the UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain, providing access to Android apps.
??Amazon at the event also introduced the Kindle Paperwhite e-reader, which can light up and is aimed at people who want to read in bed before they fall asleep. The e-reader has a backlight that lights up the screen as well as GlowLight, which is similar to a feature on Barnes & Noble’s Nook Simple Touch.??The Paperwhite gets eight weeks of battery life even with the light on, and has capacitive touch. It is 21g and is thinner than a magazine. It has a sharper screen than previous Kindle e-readers. ??The Paperwhite with Wi-Fi will sell for $119. A 3G version will work in more than 100 countries and will be priced at $179 and ship on 1 October.
Don’t get too excited, there was no word on release dates for the Irish market.?
IDG News Service
Subscribers 0
Fans 0
Followers 0
Followers