We'd been hearing for a while that Amazon was preparing to enter the color tablet computer market, but we weren't prepared for the price. Today, the company announced four new models in the Kindle line, priced from $79 for a basic e-Ink Kindle reader to the top of the line Kindle Fire, an Android-based color touch-screen tablet and e-reader priced at just $199.
The Kindle Fire is much smaller than the iPad, with a 7-inch diagonal screen compared to the iPad's 10.1" screen. That 7-inch screen is a multi-touch display with IPS (in-plane switching) technology and anti-reflective treatment. Native resolution is 1024 x 600 pixels with support for 16 million colors. The resolution, combined with support for Adobe Flash should make for an optimized web browsing experience using Amazon's proprietary web browser they call Silk.
The Kindle Fire is currently WiFi-only: there is no 3G option as there is for the standard Kindle models. Assuming you have a smart phone with a mobile WiFi hot spot feature, you could use that, or virtually any other WiFi network to connect to the Internet. And connect is something you will definitely want to do as the Kindle Fire comes with only 8 Gigabytes of on-board storage. Amazon encourages their customers to store their content (books, music, movies) on the cloud and is offering free unlimited cloud storage for all Amazon-purchased content.
And that content is not limited to just books, magazines and music any more. With Amazon's Prime video library, Kindle Fire owners get unlimited streaming of over 11,000 TV and movie titles for $79/year. A one-month free trial of Prime is included with purchase of the Kindle Fire. Thousands of additional movie and TV titles are available instantly for rent or purchase. In addition to the ability to read books, view videos and listen to music, customers will have access to thousands of free and paid apps in Amazon's Appstore for Android.
Amazon will begin shipping the Kindle Fire on November 15 and is accepting pre-orders now. It's first-come first-served so you might want to order now if you want to get in on the first batch.
