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The Amazon Kindle Fire has already become a tablet to be reckoned with since its introduction on Sept. 28. In really one month (Sept. 28-Oct. 28) Amazon is rumored to have accumulated 500,000 pre-orders for the fresh tablet, with perhaps another million or more pre-sales made by cost partners like Target, Walmart, and Best Buy. What makes the Kindle Fire thus favored? How does it compare with other pills available today? Here's the low-down. The 5 Best Features Price-- Price is definitely the most appealing feature. At $199, the Kindle Fire is less than half the price of most other tablets; its closest cost competitor is the Nook Tablet from Barnes & Noble at $249. To achieve this cost advantage, Amazon has likely used a loss-leader system and priced its tablet below cost, anticipating it may create more sales for Amazon down the line. Additionally, the device forgoes many of the extras available from other pills. Case in point,it has no camera/video, no GPS, no microphone, with no Bluetooth or 3G wi-fi connectivity. (More on which below.) Portability -- The 7-in. touchscreen makes the Kindle Fire more portable than bigger pills like Apple's iPad2 and HP's TouchPad. The whole tablet is less than half an inch thick and somewhat small than the usual mid-sized paperback book wide and height. It weighs really 14.6 oz. Of program, size is a classic Goldilocks dilemma with regards to pills. Too big, too little, and ideal rely as to how you use it. Should you do mostly Web browsing, then the 7-in. screen is usually too little for the typical Website. You'd be doing a great deal of scrolling about. However when you like to watch streaming video or movies, play games, hear music, or understand an e-book, then the 7-in. screen is usually ideal. The device is clearly created as a portable content-delivery device, particularly for Amazon information (however, not exclusively). The 7-in., 1024 x 600-pixel display functions effectively for streamed or downloaded graphic media and delivers crisp, vibrant, bright images. Seamless Access to Amazon Portal -- Whenever you order the Kindle Fire from Amazon's online store, it is delivered with pre-links to any or all a favorite Amazon accounts, like Apps, Games, Kindle eBooks, Cloud Player and Kindle Prime. The media can be bought or rented and streamed or downloaded to the tablet from the wide host farms of Amazon Web Services (AWS). If you have other devices for streaming media, Amazon's Whispersync development keeps all of them synchronized with all the tablet. Case in point, if you stop observing a movie found on the Kindle Fire, and afterwards you need to start observing it again in your MacBook, Whispersync saves a destination to choose up where you left off when you reconnect to the Web. Amazon furthermore delivers 5 GB of complimentary Cloud space, which assists pay for the meager 8-GB of onboard space. (More on which below.) In addition to Amazon's ginormous library of more than 18 million movies, TELEVISION shows, tracks, books, and magazines, the Kindle Fire furthermore delivers seamless access to a lot of other sources of information like Netflix, Rhapsody, Pandora, Twitter, Comics by comiXology, Facebook, The Weather Channel and games from Zynga, EA, Gameloft, PopCap and Rovio. Simplicity -- Amazon did a ideal job with all the interface (UI). The home screen is intuitively graphical, composed of 2 online bookshelves with media icons arrayed on them. The upper, bigger bookshelf, called the "carousel," contains icons which are stacked chronologically with all the last-used item ahead. The reduce, small shelf is made to carry a favorites. In one stroke, Amazon's bookshelf UI pays homage to its bookstore root while furthermore showing a flair for shape and work once found merely inside Apple products. Innovative 'Silk' Web Browser-- Perhaps the most innovative feature is the Web browser. Unlike standard browsers, Amazon's "Silk" browser refuses to create a required page locally. Instead, the high-speed AWS Cloud host caches the page initially, then sends it to the tablet inside one flow of code. The outcome is a split browser program which resides each found on the tablet and inside the host cloud. The split of work enables sites to download faster than with typical Android devices. According to Amazon, the machines furthermore adjust to a browsing habits, thin task gets faster over time. Kindle Fire vs. Additional Tablets Much has been said regarding the Kindle Fire vs. the Apple iPad2. Let's be clear: Apple has nothing to be concerned about. The 2 pills are not similar in almost any significant way. In fact, Amazon has created its very own genre of tablet, which makes it a small awkward to draw straight comparisons with other devices. Amazon has furthermore created its very own closed-platform adaptation of Google's Android OS, thus actually comparing the Kindle Fire with other Android pills is tricky. Nevertheless, it is actually practical to list the specs of other favored pills in order to view how the Amazon Kindle Fire stacks up against them. Kindle Fire:
- Operating System: Android (custom)
- Processor: 1-GHz Dual-Core TI OMAP 4
- RAM: 512 MB
- Storage: 8 GB
- Display: 7-in. IPS LCD
- Resolution: 1024 x 600
- Cameras: None
- Video: None
- Battery Life: 8 days. (reading only)
- WiFi: 802.11 b/g/n
- 3G/4G: No
- Bluetooth: No
- GPS: No
- Dimensions: 7.5 x 4.7 x 0.45 inside.
- Weight: 14.6 oz.
- Price: $199
Apple iPad2:
- Operating System: iOS 4
- Processor: 1-GHz Dual-Core Apple A5
- RAM: 512 MB
- Storage: 16 GB
- Display: 9.7-in. IPS LCD
- Resolution: 1024 x 768
- Cameras: Two
- Video: 720p
- Battery Life: 10 days. (browsing, video, etc.)
- WiFi: 802.11 b/g/n
- 3G/4G: 3G (+$130)
- Bluetooth: Yes
- GPS: Yes
- Dimensions: 9.5 x 7.3 x 0.35 inside.
- Weight: one.33 pound.
- Price: $499
BlackBerry Playbook:
- Operating System: QNX
- Processor: 1-GHz Dual-Core TI OMAP 4430
- RAM: 1 GB
- Storage: 16 GB
- Display: 7-in. IPS LCD
- Resolution: 1024 x 600
- Cameras: Two
- Video: 1080p
- Battery Life: 7 days. (playing video)
- WiFi: 802.11 b/g/n
- 3G/4G: 3G/4G
- Bluetooth: Yes
- GPS: Yes
- Dimensions: 5.1 x 7.6 x 0.4 inside.
- Weight: 0.9 pound.
- Price: $499
Nook Tablet:
- Operating System: Android (custom)
- Processor: 1-GHz Dual-Core TI OMAP 4
- RAM: 1 GB
- Storage: 16 GB
- Display: 7-in. IPS LCD
- Resolution: 1024 x 600
- Cameras: None
- Video: None
- Battery Life: 11.5 days. (reading only)
- WiFi: 802.11 b/g/n
- 3G/4G: No
- Bluetooth: No
- GPS: No
- Dimensions: 8.1 x 5 x 0.48 inside.
- Weight: 14.1 oz.
- Price: $249
HP TouchPad:
- Operating System: WebOS 3.0
- Processor: one.2-GHz Dual-Core Qualcomm Snapdragon
- RAM: 1 GB
- Storage: 16 GB
- Display: 10.1-in. IPS LCD
- Resolution: 1024 x 768
- Cameras: None
- Video: None
- Battery Life: 9 days. (playing video)
- WiFi: 802.11 b/g/n
- 3G/4G: 3G
- Bluetooth: Yes
- GPS: Yes
- Dimensions: 9.4 x 7.5 0.54 inside.
- Weight: one.6 pound.
- Price: $499
The list makes it very obvious how Amazon will offer its tablet for merely $199. It's no-frills all of the way. The tablet has 512 MB of RAM, 8 GB of space memory (half the space of other devices), no camera, no video, no microphone, no 3G/4G, no Bluetooth, with no GPS. This furthermore lacks an expandable memory port. If the Amazon Kindle Fire were fighting head-to-head with other more-established pills, it would lose. Instead, Amazon has shrewdly recognized which information is king, thus it has created a low-cost, no-frills tablet which taps into what is probably the greatest online repository of information found on the world. Who needs a GPS for which? Do I truly need to know my accurate coordinates while streaming my favorite episode of "Mad Men?" Of all of the other pills inside the list, Barnes & Noble's newly announced Nook is the nearest competitor. The Nook furthermore runs a custom Android OS and taps into Barnes & Noble's information. The Nook has twice the RAM (1 GB), twice the space (16 GB), along with a longer-lasting power. This has an expandable memory port along with a microphone. Based on hardware specs alone, the Nook provides more, however, it also costs $50 more. Furthermore, with regards to content Barnes & Noble continues to be mostly an on-line bookstore. Not even Apple can vie over the board with Amazon's wide range of media, products, software, etc. Whenever you are looking at total information, Amazon is king. The 3 Worst Features 7-in. Display-- Although the 7-in. display is an asset with regards to portability, it is actually an annoyance whenever watching certain information. Web browsing and clip reading, for example, are frustrating on a 7-in. screen. Screen size, therefore, cuts each ways. There is no obvious way to eliminate this "Goldilocks dilemma" for all sorts of information without a technological breakthrough like a flexible, roll-uptablet (which is probably really about the corner). For now, the trade-off is involving the full watching connection with bigger displays vs. the more limited connection with small, cheaper, more portable screens. No Expandable Memory Slot-- Whenever designing a bare-bones tablet, it makes sense to skimp on memory to reduce a cost. However how more, when anything, does it cost to add an expandable memory port inside a shape? Including a memory port not just keeps a producing costs low, it furthermore adds value for a shoppers, whom now have the option of adding more memory. One can merely assume which Amazon wants its users to store their media inside the Amazon Cloud. Amazon delivers complimentary, unlimited cloud space for all Amazon-acquired information, however, non-Amazon information over 5 GB costs income to store. Whenever combined with onboard space of 8 GB, the total complimentary space for common information is just 13 GB. That's still less capacity than the onboard space of other pills, and not rather much capacity for online media. Also, really the only access to the Amazon Cloud is by the Wi-Fi modem. There is no 3G or 4G connectivity. If you're traveling, for example, and do not have Wi-Fi connection to the Cloud, all the information you need to access need to be pre-loaded. It would be better for Amazon as well as its shoppers when the Kindle Fire came with a memory port. Mediocre Battery Life-- Whenever compared to its nearest competitor, Barnes & Noble's Nook, the stated power lifestyle of the Kindle Fire pops into their heads brief by regarding 3 1/2 hours. An 8-hr. power lifestyle for just reading is nothing to publish home regarding. Besides, most individuals would be doing a lot more than really reading. Unfortunately, the rechargeable power is sealed inside and can't be upgraded. Verdict Kudos to Amazon for recognizing the value of a low-cost tablet specifically created for delivering information. The associated with this tablet is that it plays to Amazon's sure strength as a information provider while furthermore extending the Kindle legacy. It's ironic to consider to November of 2007 whenever the Kindle Firstly Generation was introduced for $399. This sold out inside 5 1/2 hours. This was really the only Kindle to have expandable memory port, too. (Hint, hint.) If pre-sales are any sign, the Kindle Fire will be another raging achievement. Despite the depressing economy, or perhaps due to it, individuals were coating about buy this low-cost no-frills tablet actually before it began to ship. The Kindle Fire is no iPad2, however, it provides the potential to become an important fresh media and info system. Only time may tell when this might be yet another Kindle or something else completely. Who knows, the Kindle Fire could do for Amazon what the Walkman did for Sony.
The Kindle Fire
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