Amazon Kindle Fire unveiled today

Amazon

The greatly anticipated Amazon Fire was unveiled at a Press Conference in New York today. This tablet has been seen by many as a potentially serious rival to the iPad. And with a initial price tag  of $199 it looks set to be an affordable tablet for those who find the iPad too expensive.

The tablet features a seven-inch display and employs a dual-core processor and it comes with a highly customized Android operating system. The fire will be highly integrated with the Amazon store for relevant products and with the Android apps Marketplace. This is likely to be a big draw of the Kindle Fire

The Fire will take the Whispersync feature of the Kindle, that allows you to hold your place in a book between other devices, and expand it to include TV shows and movies. Another cool feature is the ability to delete content on the tablet but re-download it later because it will be stored using Amazon Cloud Storage for free. This will come in useful due to the fact that the Fire only has a memory of 8 gigabytes.

One potential disadvantage it that the first wave of Kindle Fire only has wi-fi capability and not 3G wireless capability. Given the fact that standard Kindle devices have 3G it would seem likely tha Amazon will include this in later models, which may cause some consumers to wait before purchasing.

Can it Compete with the iPad?

According to the website npr.org, the Amazon fire is no comparison to the iPad in terms of size, design and functionality but it is a big step up when compared with the Kindle.

All in all the Kindle Fire looks like an interesting development in the world of tablets and e-readers.

Related articles

• Amazon Kindle Fire impressions (engadget.com)
• Amazon’s Kindle Fire: What it has and doesn’t have (shortformblog.tumblr.com)