Amazon has changed the eReader and tablet landscape completely. It is thus clear now that there exist only two tablet makers, Apple and Amazon. The other happenings are a bad dream from which Samsung and HTC are stll recovering. Amazon has launched Kindle Fire, its Android tablet at a price of $199, which is cheaper than any other decent tablet in the market.
Kindle Fire is a startup device for Amazon which we can say is a result of the famous Indian technology, ‘Jugaad’. Amazon made some modifications in the Blackberry Plabook hardware, loaded its own technology of Android that is between Android 2.2 and Android 2.3 and then ensured that the art worked. Amazon has thus become the great integrator. Let’s have a look at the tablet.
Amazon Kindle Fire – The Plus Points
The Amazon tablet has a 1 GHz dual core processor, 7 inches capacitive touch screen, IPS display, screen resolution of 1024×600, 8 GB internal memory, free cloud storage, WiFi and a battery life of 8 hours or 7.5 hours of video watching.
The other specifications are the regular ones that one can expect best in a $199 tablet.
The cloud service is the best feature of Kindle Fire. The US customers purchasing Kindle Fire will get access to 10,000 movies and famous TV shows, 800,000 books costing around Rs. $9.99 and 2 million free books.
Amazon Kindle Fire – The Negative Points
Amazon’s Kindle Fire is not an ideal Android tablet. Any Google updates will not make to the Kindle Fire. Amazon will be responsible for all the future updates on the tablet as it owns its OS. Fire fails to link to the Android market. It can only connect to the Amazon App Store. The Tablet can run Android applications but that would be difficult to install in an out of the box tablet.
Amazon Kindle Fire – The Flaws
Kindle Fire does not have 3G, camera and mic. Amazon clearly is focusing on Kindle Fire as a media consumption for its various cloud services. The absence of camera and mic is acceptable in order to cut down on the price. But the absence of 3G is a big question. WiFi is omnipresent everywhere. But a portable device hugely dependent on the anytime available cloud service, not having inbuilt mobile connection capacity is baffling. I have not yet talked about the bezel on the tablet.
Amazon Kindle Fire – The Crux
Amazon’s Kindle Fire has set an example that a successful tablet launch is not always about great hardware. The apps and the ecosystem make tablets a success whose absence can fail even the best hardware containing tablets. Do not take this as a success of Android tablets since it’s not! Kindle Fire has a configuration and features that only Amazon can pull of. Kindle Fire is in fact a bane of Android tablets. They have to now compete with the top end iPad as well as the bottom end Kindle Fire.