Kindle Fire
Kindle Fire is a low-priced tablet computer from Amazon.
The tablet’s form factor -- bigger than a smart phone but smaller than most other tablets – is designed to make the device easier to manipulate, while still offering a relatively large screen. In late September 2011, Amazon announced that the tablet, scheduled for release in November, would have a 7-inch color display and cost $199.
Other Kindle Fire features include:
- Gingerbread operating system, an Android-based open source OS.
- Amazon Silk mobile browser.
- Kindle e-reader application, integrated with Amazon’s large collection of e-books.
- 16 million color high-definition touch screen.
- Support for video and gaming.
- Whispersync technology, which enables wireless synchronization of media across devices.
- Integration with Android app store.
- Dual-core processor.
- 512MB of RAM.
- Weighs 14.6 ounces.
- 8-gigabyte local storage.
- Battery life up to 8.5 hours with wireless turned off.
- Unlimited, free cloud storage.
- Charges in four hours over USB or through a power adapter.
- Automatic cloud backup.
- Runs on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2)
- Wi-Fi connectivity.
- Twitter, Facebook and Netflix apps.
- Free 30-day trial of Amazon Prime, a free shipping and streaming video service.
The initial release of Kindle Fire will not have a built-in camera or microphone and is not 3G wireless network-compatible.
See a Kindle Fire demonstration:
Continue reading about Kindle Fire:
> CNET calls Kindle Fire the iPad killer.
> Endgadget covers the Kindle Fire announcement, includes reader commentary.
> Amazon's Kindle Fire pages.