After a long year of rumours, leaks and speculation, the day that Amazon officially announces its first Tablet device is upon us.
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos took to the stage at Amazon’s big event in New York City to unveil the online retail giant’s first foray into the Tablet – it’s called the Amazon Kindle Fire and it will only cost $199.
As we expected, the Kindle Fire is 7-inches in size and bears a striking resemblance to the Blackberry Playbook. It has a 7-inch IPS screen, dual-core processor and weighs 413g, much lighter than the iPad and totally portable thanks to its smaller size.
Thanks to Amazon’s huge online presence and a number of existing media services, their Kindle Fire Tablet will offer customers access to a huge range of Movies, eBooks and more at the tap of a button. Over 100,000 Movies and TV shows, 17 million songs, 300,000 Android apps and all of Amazons Kindle eBooks are easily accessible through various apps and stores that will be preloaded onto the tablet.
The tablet runs Android software, but Amazon have tinkered with it and customised it to their taste, so it barely resembles the Android that you and I are used to.
Internet comes from Wi-Fi connections only (802.11 b/g/n) – there won’t be a 3G model available. There are also no cameras on board, nor a microphone. Amazon are really aiming this tablet at the media enthusiast, or somebody that wants a cheap, good quality tablet which offers Flash (take that Apple!) compatible web browsing, email, apps and more.
There’s 8GB of onboard storage for adding your music, videos and more, though this tablet is aimed with the Cloud in mind. Thanks to Amazon’s cloud services, you’ll be able to store your eBooks, Movies and more online and access them easily, thus saving storage space on your tablet.
Amazon say the Amazon Kindle Fire tablet will last 8 hours with the inbuilt battery, or 7.5 hours if you’re watching video.
Amazon’s official advert for the Kindle Fire tablet is below, check it out for a glimpse of the tablet in action and what it’s about. Pretty arty-farty, don’t you think?
The Kindle Fire has literally only just been announced on stage, so stay tuned for more information as it unravels!
Amazon’s Kindle Fire tablet will be shipping November 15th, but you can begin pre-ordering at Amazon later on today.
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