Today in Cali was Amazon’s big Kindle event which CEO Jeff Bezos took to the stage and commanded the entire event. The entire Kindle family from top to bottom got refreshed in one way or another as they left no Kindle behind. Last year’s big hit, the Kindle Fire, spearheaded the affordable tablet gold rush as Amazon looks to continue moving forward.
There are several new features that will come along with these new Fires to do more for you. Like X-Ray for Books & Movies that allow you to kind of Wikipedia any details on the characters, plot, or author while reading or watch movies. Immersion reading lets you enjoy listening while reading where you can read along while the audiobook plays for you. This goes hand-in-hand with Amazon’s Whispersync where you can pick where you left reading by listening to the audiobook. This feature has expanded to games where users continue where they left between devices as their progress gets saved to the cloud. Kindle Free Time sets time limits per child for reading, gaming, etc. While the Silk browser, native email client, & calendar have all been updated to offer better sync, support, & performance. And now on to the hardware.
Last year’s Fire gets a modest but needed refresh with an even lower price point. The Fire refresh is equipped with a faster processor which makes overall operation 40% faster than the previous model, double the RAM, and a longer battery life. The display is relatively the same but you have access to the new features available on all Fires. Priced at $159 and will begin shipping on September 14th as you can pre-order yours here.
Shaping to be Amazon’s best seller for this holidays are their new line of Fire HD tablets. Available in a 7inch, 8.9inch, and 8.9inch w/ LTE. Offering overall better specs than the refreshed 7inch Fire, these will easily become the company’s new flagship tablet. Let’s get into the differences shall we?
The 7inch Fire HD offers an IPS LCD display w/ 1280 x 800 resolution, powered by a new TI OMAP 4 processor, 16GB of storage, 5GHz dual antenna Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, HDMI out, 11-hour battery life, and a HD front-facing camera. Priced at $199, it will become available on September 14th and can be pre-ordered here.
The 8.9inch Fire HD offers an IPS LCD display w/ 1920 x 1200 resolution + 254ppi and 16GB or 32GB of storage. Everything else matches that of the 7inch Fire HD. Pricing is $299 (16GB) & $369 (32GB). This one won’t arrive until November 20th as you can still pre-order yours here.
And lastly, Amazon unveiled a 8.9inch Fire HD w/ LTE radios on-board and service provided by AT&T. So it’s everything the Wi-Fi only Fire HD but with LTE speeds at your disposal on-the-go. Pricing for the hardware starts at $499 (32GB) & $599 (64GB). The most interesting thing is the LTE pricing package that comes along with it. The LTE bundle is priced at $49.99 for the year and comes with 250MB of data usage monthly, 20GB of Amazon’s Cloud storage, & a $10 Amazon Appstore credit. Users will be able to upgrade their monthly caps to 3GB or 5GB as well. No pricing details revealed on those yet. You can pre-order your here as this one won’t be available also until November 20th.
So who getting one or are you waiting to see what the iPad Mini will offer?
