Tip UsAmazon have officially announced their new Kindle Fire, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos presented the tablet at their press event in New York today. The 7-inch tablet which will be running the popular Android OS will only cost $199. That price includes a 30 day trial of Amazon Prime, which is their $79/year subscription service that includes unlimited two-day shipping and streaming video access.
Given the cheap price tag there’s no doubt this is set to challenge the dominance of the Apple iPad, which costs $500 for the cheapest model. To meet the low price however, the tablet has been heavily trimmed-down, with no microphone or camera.
In terms of specs it has a 1GHz dual-core TI OMAP processor and the 7-inch display which is covered in toughened Gorilla Glass runs at 1024 x 600 resolution. It has 8GB of internal storage, 512MB of RAM and weighs in at only 14.6 ounces. The battery life is around 7 hours of WiFi use after a full charge.
With the $199 price tag you also get free Amazon Cloud storage and the device comes pre-registered to your account, so you can get started straight away. Whispersync now works with movies and tv shows. Although the tablet is running Android the UI looks nothing like what we’re used to seeing with the OS, Amazon have pretty much done their own thing with the UI.
Pre-orders are set to start today in the US, with shipments heading out on November 15th.
Amazon Kindle Fire Specifications
- 7-inch 1024 x 600 pixel IPS Corning Gorilla Glass display with 16 million colors, 169 pixels per inch
- Dual-core TI OMAP4 processor
- 8GB internal storage
- 100,000 movies, 17 million songs, Android App Store, Kindle books available
- Free cloud storage on Amazon cloud
- Universal Search bar for device, web, or Amazon
- Android OS with radical bookshelf UI
- Whispersync that now includes videos and TV
- Est. Battery Life: 8 hrs reading, 7.5hrs video playback (Wi-Fi off)
- Wi-Fi
- Supports files: ZW, TXT, PDF, DOC, DOCX, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP, AAC, MP3, MIDI, OGG, WAV, MP4, VP8
- USB 2.0 (micro-B), 3.5mm audio, 802.11n Wi-Fi
- 7.5? x “4.7? x 0.45? (190mm x 120mm x 11.4mm)
- 14.6 ounces (413 grams)
- Ships November 15th
