The $199 Kindle Fire is available now for preorder. It will be released on November 15th, 2011. Given the $199 price it’s likely to sell out – so worth preordering now.
The page linked to above has all the details.
- 7″ multi-touch (two fingers at once) display. IPS (in-place switching). 1024 by 600 pixel resolution. 169 ppi.
- 7.5″ x 4.7″ x 0.45″ (190 mm x 120 mm x 11.4 mm).
- 8 GB memory in-built.
- Free Cloud Storage.
- WhisperSync for Movies.
- Free Month of Prime.
- Gorilla Glass display.
More at the Kindle Fire product page.
Notes from the Kindle Fire Conference
Setting things up for Kindle Fire
Now Jeff Bezos is talking about Amazon’s streaming services and seems to be setting up the Kindle Tablet. He’s talking about Prime Instant Video – which you get free with Prime.
Talking about Amazon Web Services – seems there will be some link between Kindle Fire and the Amazon Cloud. With the $79 Kindle there’s the promise of free Cloud storage. With the $199 Kindle Tablet there might be more.
Now talking about how to bring together Prime, AWS, Video, MP3, App Store. Mentions the Kindle Fire. So, the awkward name is reality.
- 7″ IPS display. Full-color.
- Dual Core Processor.
- 14.6 ounces in weight. Easy to Hold.
- Everything is backed up to the Cloud. That’s a bit much – guess with WiFi the costs for Amazon are much lower.
- WhisperSync works with movies and TV Shows.
- Heavily-customized interface – nothing like Android. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Of course, if you love openness then you won’t like it. The interface looks quite good.
- Gorilla Glass and 169 dpi for the screen.
- Supports Multi-tasking. In particular, Mr. Bezos demonstrates background music.
- This is a big one. Using the power of EC2 (Amazon Web Services related) to accelerate web browsing. Amazon Silk. It renders content in the cloud – dynamic split browsing which lets you do things locally or in the cloud. The product naming team at Amazon is on a roll – Kindle Fire, Amazon Silk, Dynamic Split Browsing.
- All in all this feature might end up being far more useful than any of the others. It’ll make browsing on Kindle Fire very smooth and quite a bit faster.
- Setting up the price – $199 Kindle Fire. Mr. Bezos says ‘Amazon has premium products at non-premium prices’.
- Corniest part by far – From Kindle, Fire is born.
Thanks to the Kindle Tablet Live Blog at Engadget and the Kindle Fire Tablet Live Blog at Technologizer.
Again, the $199 Kindle Fire is available to preorder at Amazon.
Filed under: Kindle Tablet Tagged: | kindle fire, kindle tablet
None of the links work.
Which of the links exactly?
They work for me. Are you outside the US?
I sincerely hope it becomes available to Canada REAL SOON as of right now it says US only.
Yeah. Same here. Sent it to a AmeriFriend. However, it would be nice to get it straight to Canada.
Perfect. It’s what I’ve been waiting to hear to settle my mind.
It’s the Kobo Touch at 139.00 CND for me and ease of library lending, open range of readable file types and for those pesky Amazon mobi DRM bound files already purchased by me for my Kindle for PC there is apprentice alf and calibre ebook management.
Now, if only Kobobooks would begin offering up some Amazon/B&N type daily deals and other cheap reads there’d be no need for alf but, in the meantime…
Wow and double, triple WOW!
They’ve done a great job differentiating between the different models; older Kindle 3 now called ‘Kindle Keyboard’.
Wish the’d kept the same form-factor and added a 7″ screen… They most likely kept the screen constant as that meant the least disrupption to their suplly chain.
The Fir seems to have the major features that people will want. The smartest move was to give a trial for Amazon Prime and not include it free, keeping the price of the unit lower for launch. Not everyone wants Prime, and those that have it will make good use of it on this device…
Meant ‘Fire’, not ‘Fir’. We have too many firs here in Washington State…
So I haven’t been able to figure this out from the pages… does anyone know if any of the new models are backlit?
Only the Kindle Fire (an LCD scresn) is backlit. All the others are eInk Pearl and are reflective only.
Thanks, Tony!
[...] Full details at the Kindle Fire Kindle Tablet post. [...]
Would this Kindle Fire have test to speech??
sorry, that was…text to speech
Good question. Kindles do have Text to Speech but Kindle Reading Apps don’t. Kindle Fire is a Kindle Tablet – so don’t know whether it’ll have text to speech like the Kindle or not.
No doubt the Silk Browser will be able to track your every move on the web so Amazon will be able to push individualized ads and products for each user. Pure and simple, it’s a device designed to facilitate consumption. At least they’re not kidding us by calling it a “Reader’s Tablet”.
Hadn’t thought of that – There is potential for a lot to go wrong.
This link shows the top of the Kindle Fire and calls the port an “HDMI micro usb plug”. What is that exactly???
http://www.informationweek.com/news/galleries/personal-tech/tablets/231602353?pgno=6
I think they have it wrong. It’s a micro-USB slot. It can take a charger and charge Kindle Fire via USB and it can be used for moving files from Kindle Fire to PC and back.
Amazon hasn’t mentioned HDMI support anywhere.
[...] Kindle Fire [...]
can i add my pdfs from my pc? or only the ones in amazon?
Yes, you can transfer PDFs from your PC via USB. Connect Kindle Fire to PC via the micro-USB cable and it shows up like a drive.
You can add any file format that the kindle can handle (as switch said by way of the USB port). Ninety percent of my books are text files that i downloaded from Project Gutenberg.
will the new kindles be able to read epub files for those of us who dont want the amazon formats? I assume that means will amazon provide or allow access to an epub reader app for android or can we use any old android ereader?
It’s unlikely.
Kindle Fire – might have apps that support ePub. It is unlikely though.
Kindle 4 and Kindle Touch – don’t support ePub.
I saw on their site that hulu and espn are going to available on the Fire
Pdt documents are nit opening in my kindle fire. Y is this so?
I mean pdf documents
They should open.
Try getting a PDF opening app. They should work by default.
I’ve downloaded mobile .MOBI files onto the Fire, yet they don’t seem to be recognized by any of the apps. That list includes notepad, Quickoffice, and the native Kindle.
Any thoughts on reading these project gutenburg files?
Not sure. Have you tried PDF format of the Gutenberg files?
Tracy, I have a Kindle Keyboard and have several thousand Project Gutenberg books all of which I had downloaded in text format. The KK handles text files perfectly, so I just drag and drop the files onto the kindle. I didn’t have to download the mobi format.
However, I have gotten some epub books that I use Calibre to convert into mobi. My Kindle handles them just fine.
If by notepad you mean the kindle version, it will only open documents that are 3,100 characters or less. That amounts to only two or three pages.
Don’t know if any of that will help or how much is applicable to the Fire. That’s my two cent’s worth
I just tried to go to hulu plus….unavailable…working on it
I just copied a mp4 movie to the kindle vidieo folder….kindle fire does not see it.
Use the Gallery App – the one used to see photos. Then the video will show up.
Anyone know if my kindle will magnify my credit cards? Since the kindle file cases are like a wallet for putting credit cards and I don’t want to mess up my cards. Any thoughts?