Last night Amazon took to the stage and announced the long awaited Amazon Kindle Fire HD range to the world with the Kindle Fire HD, Fire HD 8.9 and Kindle Fire 8.9 4G, but one of the biggest questions for us in the UK was would we see any of these Fire devices on our shores.
The answer to that has come today from Amazon.co.uk, where the former online bookshop has confirmed that they will be launching the Kindle Fire HD and original Kindle Fire Android tablet devices here in the UK for the first time.
What’s more, the pricing of the tablets will be very wallet-friendly as the Kindle Fire HD will come in at £159 for the 16GB, which is the same price as the Google Nexus 7, the Kindle Fire HD’s main competitor (but the with double the memory at 16GB) and the Kindle Fire coming in at a budget £129.
One of the key reasons for the prices being so low is that the Kindle Fire tablets will have adverts on the lock screen, which means you will be carrying a portable advertising machine with you everywhere! Amazon says, “These special money-saving offers that customers will enjoy could include offers on Kindle accessories or on our digital catalogue of Kindle books, apps, games and MP3, plus many more.”
But this may just be a small price to pay for the Kindle Fire HD which is a 7-inch 1,280 x 800 screened tablet running off a dual-core 1.2Ghz Processor, Wi-Fi connectivity, exclusive Dolby Digital audio, 16GB or 32GB of storage, and 11 hours of battery life.
The Kindle Fire tablet is the same hardware as the Kindle Fire that has been released in the US for the last year, but for its release in the UK we get an updated 1.2GHz processor and 1GB of RAM to speed up the touchscreen capabilities, and all for under £130.
Both the Kindle Fire and Fire HD run software based on Google’s Android ICS operating system, but is primarily useful for downloading books, movies and music from Amazon’s various services.
Amazon has also dropped the price of its standard Amazon e-ink Kindle to just £69, but what there is no sign of here in the UK is the new Amazon Kindle “Paperwhite” eReader, so we will just have to wait a while longer to see if it lands on our shores.
The Kindle Fire and Kindle Fire HD are up for pre-order now on Amazon.co.uk and they will be priced at £129 for the Kindle Fire, £159 for the 16GB Kindle Fire HD and £199 for the 32GB Kindle Fire HD, all of which will be released on October the 25th.
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