The all new Kindle Fire sports a faster processor, double the memory, and 40% faster performance - at $159. Is Amazon CEO Steve Bezos insane? That's a ridiculously low price, but if anyone can subsidize a tablet with paid content it's Amazon.com. Bezos said Amazon wants to produce "the best tablet any price."
But the real news was Amazon's launch of the new 8.9-inch Kindle Fire HD and 7" HD models. The Kindle Fire HD edition has an advanced, true wide polarizing filter with full spectrum color at all angles and a laminated touch sensor without any air gaps. It sports 1920x1200 254ppi resolution. It has a TI OMAP 4470 processor, and is the first tablet with MIMO, dual-band (2.4, 5GHz) technology, which Amazon claims makes the tablet 41 percent faster than the iPad and 54% faster than the Nexus 7. The HD model will have more storage, starting at 16 gigabytes, compared with 6 GB for the old Fire.
It also has a Dolby audio engine exclusive to the Kindle Fire HD, which could be a nice selling point for audiophiles. Another cool feature is Whispersync for Voice which syncs all your books across all your Amazon reader apps. It'll even sync your words book with your audiobook and sync up your progression in games.
They also announced Immersion Reading where you can listen to the narration of your book while you read it. I'm not sure if that's text-to-speech or the actual professional audio recording. I believe it's TTS, which will negate the need for my TTS on Kindle Fire hack.
A new X-Ray for Movies feature lets you look up whoever is on screen at any time, without knowing his or her name. Similar to Facebook's facial recognition feature I presume unless they actually tag the video with actors names throughout. It leverages Amazon-owned IMDB.com for lookups. Also, they heard your complaints and have added a front-facing camera which will work with Skype.
The Fire HD feature new parental control options called Kindle FreeTime, which allows parents to set limits for various types of content. For instance, you can specify that the tablet is only to be used for 30 minutes of games, but can be used an unlimited amount for reading books.
The upgraded non-HD Kindle Fire is available for pre-order today and ships September 14. The smaller, 7-inch Fire HD will sell for $199 and the larger 8.9-inch model is priced at $299 and are also available for pre-order.
Other Features:
- 11 Hours of Battery life
- Bluetooth
- HDMI
- 4G LTE - 12-month data plan with 250MB per month, 20GB of Amazon Cloud storage, and a $10 credit in the Amazon Appstore for a one-time cost of $49.99
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