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| Amazon Kindle Fire Tablet |
The Internet giant Amazon announced it's news tablet - Kindle Fire - yesterday morning, at an event. The long-awaited Amazon tablet is finally here, or at least will be when it ships out to consumers in early November.
cnet - Overall, the design and features place it between the traditional Kindle and iPad on the tablet spectrum, more like the Nook Color than anything else. Amazon's main advantage here is tight integration with its outstanding suite of cloud-based digital media services: 11,000 shows and movies streaming for free for Amazon Prime subscribers, 100,000 movies and TV shows to rent or purchase through Amazon Instant, and a full digital music store with cloud storage.
On the other hand, there are still quite a few question marks. It's unclear whether there will be offline support for Amazon's video services, which is important if you, say, want to watch a movie on a plane. Amazon also didn't mention any details about third-party video services like Netfilx, Hulu Plus, and MLB.TV - all of which are available on the iPad.
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| Kindle Fire Tablet |
Here are the Kindle Fire features:
- 7-inch IPS display, 1024x600-pixel resolution at 169 dpi, Gorilla Glass
- Dual-core processor
- 512MB RAM
- 8GB internal memory
- 512MB RAM
- 8GB internal memory
- Weights 14.6 ounces (414 grams)
- Built-in Wi-Fi
- Built-in Wi-Fi
- Amazon claims "up to 8 hours of continuous reading or 7.5 hours of video playback, with wireless off"
- Tightly integrated with Amazon services like Amazon Instant Video and Cloud Drive
- Features new "cloud-accelerated" browser named Silk
- 30-day free trial of Amazon Prime
- $199, ships November 15, available for preorder today
It's obvious that Amazon is trying to get one of the lead positions in the tablet market.
Apple is going to have one serious opponent in Amazon's face.
Amazon is really trying to differentiate itself, and potentially get a leg up on Apple is by pulling a trick or two from the same playbook.
The new tablet represents a total package of what users can get on other platforms if they were to add all of the company's apps together.
Yet Amazon's also trying to create a custom user experience by including its own application store and Web browser called Silk. The Web browser is one of the key areas where Amazon can differentiate itself from Apple and other rivals, making use of its Elastic Compute Cloud technology to speed up browsing for tablet users by pre-loading some content ahead of when a user visits that page.
For the past several months Apple's begun offering something identical as part of its iCloud service, letting users re-download digital content they've purchased from its stores and sync things up between devices. There again, Amazon's competing with that strategy using its Whispersync technology, which can sync up downloads, bookmarks, notes highlights, and a user's place in books and video content.
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| Amazon Kindle Fire |
Just last week, the company signed a streaming deal with 20th Century Fox to bring its programming to Amazon's streaming video service, one that Fire users will have out of the box. All told, that adds up to 17 million songs, 1 million books, and 100,000 movies and TV shows.The Fire also represents the first device from Amazon itself offering magazines in full-color.
Where Amazon continues to be different, however, is how it's approaching its presence on other platforms.
While users must buy an Apple product to get Apple's software, Amazon continues to offer its software and experience on other platforms, including other Android tablets.
The Fire is the company's first effort to really make that experience its own.
The Fire is the company's first effort to really make that experience its own.
Watch the Kindle Fire TV Commercial:
