Amazon today introduced the 7-inch Kindle Fire full color multi-touch 8GB Tablet with Wi-Fi for $199. It features a proprietary cloud-accelerated browser, free storage in the Amazon Cloud, Whispersync, 14.6 ounce design that's easy to hold with one hand, brilliant color touchscreen, and a fast and powerful dual core processor. Use it for streaming music, web browsing, reading books, magazines, apps, games, watching movies, or TV shows.
The all-new Kindle Fire's color LCD touchscreen delivers 16 million colors in high resolution and 169 pixels per inch using IPS (in-plane switching) technology. In addition, the Kindle Fire display is chemically strengthened to be 20 times stiffer and 30 times harder than plastic, which means it is incredibly durable and will stand up to accidental bumps and scrapes.
The Kindle Fire web browser Amazon Silk introduces a radical new paradigm – 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. The Silk browser software resides both on Kindle Fire and on the massive server fleet that comprises the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2). With each page request, Silk dynamically determines a division of labor between the mobile hardware and Amazon EC2 (i.e. which browser sub-components run where) that takes into consideration factors like network conditions, page complexity, and cached content. The result is a faster web browsing experience, and it's available exclusively on Kindle Fire.
Amazon designed the Kindle Fire user interface from the ground up to make it easier than ever to purchase, manage, and enjoy your digital content. Just like with Kindle e-readers, Kindle Fire comes automatically pre-registered to your Amazon.com account so you can immediately start enjoying your digital content purchased from Amazon or shop for new content. All of your digital content is instantly available to enjoy and manage with a simple, consistent experience across all content types.
Amazon's Whispersync technology which automatically synchronizes your Kindle library, last page read, bookmarks, notes, and highlights across multiple devices will now include videos. So you can start streaming a movie on your Kindle Fire, and when you get home, you can resume streaming right where you left off on your TV — avoid the frustration of needing to find your spot.
Just like Kindle e-readers, Kindle Fire offers free storage for all your Amazon digital content in the Amazon Cloud. Amazon digital content is automatically backed up for free in the Amazon Cloud's Worry-Free Archive where it's available for re-downloading anytime.
Kindle Fire weighs just 14.6 ounces and is small and light enough to hold in just one hand and carry everywhere you go. The lightweight, compact design makes Kindle Fire perfect for web browsing, playing games, reading and shopping on-the-go.
Over 100,000 movies and TV shows from Amazon Instant Video, including thousands of new releases and popular TV shows, available to stream or download, purchase or rent – all just one tap away. Amazon Prime Members enjoy instant, unlimited, commercial-free streaming of over 11,000 movies and TV shows at no additional cost. Kindle Fire comes with one free month of Amazon Prime.
Amazon's low priced tablet doesn't come without compromises. There are no cameras for video chatting or taking photos. No integrated 3G or 4G wireless data option. Its storage capability is fixed at 8GB and is non upgradable. That stores about a dozen movies. However, Amazon's included Cloud Storage will enable you to stream content, so that is less of a drawback.
Price and Availability
The Amazon Kindle Fire will be available November 15, 2011 in the U.S. for $199. → pre-order
Amazon's new Kindle line-up:
Kindle ($79)
Kindle Touch ($99)
Kindle Touch 3G ($149)
Kindle Fire ($199)