The color tablet from Amazon is finally here and it is called the Kindle Fire. The original Kindle launched in 2007 was misunderstood by many who expected the electronic device to be a tablet that will go head to head against the iPad 2, which was launched in the same year. With an introductory price of $399, the original Kindle e-book reader was a steep price to pay for an electronic paper display without the touchscreen capability.
Amazon Kindle Fire
Heeding on what the electronic consumers are clamoring for, Amazon finally launched their own tablet computer version aligned with the Kindle series. The Amazon Kindle Fire was launched on November 19 this year at the introductory price of $199, but you can order kindle fire here. This is just a fraction of the price compared to currently available tablet computers from Apple, Samsung, and LG.
Video Of New Kindle
Fiery Features Of The Amazon Kindle Fire Tablet
Let’s jump into this kindle fire review by looking at the features of this new android tablet. Backed by Amazon.com, the largest online retailer of the world, this tablet has the best support for online content with over 18 million listings of various multimedia formats. Viewed on the 7-inch color touchscreen that can deliver up to 16 million colors, movies and pictures are stunningly vibrant with life. With in-plane switching (IPS) technology, an extra-wide viewing angle is further achieved.
More than the multimedia content that can be played on the device, apps and games can also be downloaded through the Amazon Appstore. Since tablet computer is run by Android 2.3 Gingerbread, a great collection of stable Android game titles can be installed. Of course, productivity apps such as text file, spreadsheet, and slideshow editors can also be implemented on the device. Users will even be more delighted with the “free app a day” feature of the Amazon Appstore.
A dual-core processor beefs up the overall processing power of the new Amazon Kindle fire tablet. This raw muscle power allows multiple applications to be run simultaneously with unnoticeable lag. Users can play music while browsing the World Wide Web with downloads concurrently taking place in the background.
Great document support is another feature of the electronic device. Common documents such as Word and PDF can be opened with full compatibility. Furthermore, installing apps for viewing or editing other file formats extends its overall functionality.
Protecting the gorgeous display is a very tough material known as gorilla glass, which is chemically strengthened to become 20 times stiffer than standard plastic. It protects the display from scratches caused by bumps and scrapes. Compared with standard plastic, the chemically reinforced glass is 30 times harder.
Amazon Kindle Fire Specs – Seriously Fired Up Technical Details
- Processor And Memory - The powerful Texas Instruments OMAP 4 dual-core processor with clock speed rated between 1 and 1.2 GHz makes the device very responsive even with multiple applications simultaneously running. Combined with a memory of 512 MB, data-intensive applications are executed without lag.
- Storage - Although the storage capacity of 8 GB may be meager compared to current tablet computer standards, it can house accommodate about 80 apps, a dozen movies, hundreds of books, and thousands of songs. If this storage is not enough, users can always opt to store their digital contents on the Amazon EC2 cloud for free.
- Display And Size - The 7-inch multitouch display that uses the capacitive touch sensitive technology has a resolution of 1024 by 600 at 169 pixels per inch. It has an anti-reflective treatment to make contents viewable even under direct sunlight. The device is also very handy with dimensions measuring 7.5 by 4.7 inches and a depth of only 0.45 of an inch. At 14.6 ounces, it is very light to be carried around inside the bag. It is similar in size to the original Kindle but just an inch taller in length.
- Connectivity - WiFi connectivity of the Amazon Kindle Fire supports both public and private networks that use the 802.11x standard specifications. Security standards support WEP, WPA and WPA2, but do not allow peer-to-peer connections since these are easily breached. A micro-B USB 2.0 port enables the device to be connected to other devices such as the desktop computer. Other peripherals based on the USB 2.0 standard as well can be attached.
- Support File Types - Native support of different file formats is very extensive. Kindle’s proprietary format AZW is, of course, supported as well as TXT, PDF, DOC, and DOCX. Supported image formats include JPEG, GIF, PNG, and BMP. Audio file support is also extensive allowing music file extensions such as AAC, MIDI, MP3, OGG, and WAV to be played.
- Battery Use - Battery life promises up to 8 hours of nonstop ebook reading. For high-resolution video playback, battery can provide up to 7.5 hours of power. With WiFi connectivity switched on for Web browsing, battery life is reduced down to about 7 hours.
Internet Browsing – As Smooth As Amazon Silk
The previous ebook readers in the Kindle series feature an experimental browser for exploring the Web. Amazon made the smart move when a cloud-accelerated browser known as the Amazon Silk is pre-installed on the device. This technology realizes ultra fast Web browsing since most of the loading calculations are performed on a Web server.
Outsourced processing prevents the device from being overworked so that computational resources are better allotted for other offline applications. Servers running the EC2 cloud are orders of magnitude more powerful than those of standard mobile devices. This smart technology also reduces power consumption resulting to longer battery life.
Transit times in wireless connections typically take about 100 milliseconds to load web pages. With persistent connection of the Amazon EC2 to the Internet backbone, transit time is significantly reduced down to 5 milliseconds. Thus, round trip latency is minimized providing very quick response for Web requests.
To put this speed in perspective, typical web pages to fully load require about 80 files to be retrieved from about a dozen domains. To complete the whole process of loading a full web page, hundreds of roundtrips have to be taken in between the connections. Hence, the difference between 100 milliseconds for conventional transit times and 5 milliseconds achieved by the Amazon Web Service becomes even more pronounced.
Video On Web Browser Using Amazon Silk
Where To Buy Kindle Fire
The Amazon Kindle Fire is currently available to order through the Amazon website. However Best Buy and Staples will be selling it after it starts shipping on November 19th, 2011. While you will be able to buy kindle fire at one of these locations, ordering it directly from Amazon is the best way to insure you get the lowest price and it is already integrated with you Amazon account.
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