Amazon has announced its long anticipated Android tablet, the Kindle Fire. Priced aggressively at $199, the Kindle Fire has a 7in IPS display, dual-core processor, and will ship in the US on November 15. Amazon said it has no plans to make it available outside the US.
The Kindle Fire has 8GB storage, and also allows users to access free storage in Amazon’s cloud. It features the same WhisperSync technology as the Kindle e-reader, which has now been extended to movies and TV shows, so users can keep track of where they are in a book, TV show or movie, on whichever device they are reading or viewing it. There’s also a web browser, Amazon Silk which the company describes as ‘a “split browser” architecture that accelerates the power of the mobile device hardware by using the computing speed and power of the Amazon Web Services Cloud.’
‘Kindle Fire brings together all of the things we’ve been working on at Amazon for over 15 years into a single, fully-integrated service for customers,’ said Jeff Bezos, Amazon co-founder and CEO.
Bezos announced three new Kindles besides the Fire. The new basic Kindle is smaller and lighter than its predecessor and costs $79 for the ‘with special offers’ version. That’s Amazon terminology for ad-supported. Without adverts, the Kindle costs $109. This model is the only new Kindle available in the UK and costs £89. The Kindle Touch has a touch-screen interface and a new feature called X-Ray which allows readers to ‘see all the passages across a book that mention ideas, fictional characters, historical figures, places or topics that interest them, as well as more detailed descriptions from Wikipedia and Shelfari, Amazon’s community-powered encyclopedia for book lovers,’ according to Amazon. The Kindle Touch costs $99 with special offers or $149 without.
The final new Kindle is the Touch 3G, a version of the Touch which allows users to buy books over a mobile phone network. That model costs $149 or $199.
