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Amazon Kindle Fire HD can go advert-free for a price

Last week Amazon announced its brand new line-up of Kindle devices including the new Kindle Paperwhite, the Kindle Fire and the newly updated Kindle Fire HD, with the announcement that the latter will be coming to the UK in October, being the first Kindle Fire tablet to land on our shores.

However, when the Kindle Fire HD was announced there was one small area that we as customers (and tech-mad bloggers) questioned: The inclusion of Amazon adverts for “special offers” on the Kindle Fire HD’s lock screen.

Well, Amazon has today announced that anyone who doesn’t want their Android-powered tablet being used as a walking advertising machine will have the option to turn off the mobile advertising – for a price.

Amazon will allow owners to turn off the feature for the price of $15 (around £10 in the UK) to remove the scheme from the devices.

A statement made to Engadget from Amazon reads:

“I wanted to let you know that with Kindle Fire HD there will be a special offers opt-out option for $15. We know from our Kindle reader line that customers love our special offers and very few people choose to opt out. We’re happy to offer customers the choice.”

Now we are not sure if this is an additional $15 on top or the purchase of the Kindle or if it is something that you will be able to turn off later on using the device itself, but we are still a little peeved that Amazon will charge us just to go advert-free!

We are still yet to see what the advertising lock screen will look like and what sort of adverts will be displayed, but we will probably have to wait until the UK launch date to see the full extent of the feature and whether we would want to pay to remove it.

Check out our Amazon Kindle Fire HD versus Google Nexus 7 comparison.

Let us know your thoughts on our comments below or via our @Gadget_Helpline Twitter page or Official Facebook group.