Amazon Kindle Fire: A $199 Kindle Tablet

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In a move that has been anticipated for sometime, Amazon has introduced their own branded Android tablet, the Kindle Fire. Though based on Android, you won't be confusing this device with any of the growing army of Android tablets joining the market, nor will you see much of the Android you've come to expect. The 7" slate is designed to deliver Amazon services in a user friendly walled garden that bears little resemblance to vanilla Android. We've got first impressions and details along with a gallery after the break.

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In Depth: Amazon Kindle Fire: what you need to know

Amazon Kindle Fire: what you need to know

The Amazon Kindle Fire has been officially announced at an event in New York after months of speculation.

It's a big brother to the Amazon Kindle that we know and love and is a direct competitor to BlackBerry's PlayBook and the Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7. As well as that larger iPad 2 thing, of course.

As you'll read, it's not got an incredible feature set, but its price point - see below - sees it pitched above Amazon's existing newly redesigned Kindle and the new Kindle Touch yet under Android 3.0 tablets and the iPad 2.

There's also Amazon Silk - a radical new cloud accelerated browser. Read on for everything we know about the new Kindle Fire.

Amazon Kindle Fire price

The Kindle Fire will sell for $199 in the US, but we've no confirmation on Kindle Fire UK price.

Amazon Kindle Fire release date

The Kindle Fire release date is 15 November in the US, but we've no word on an Amazon UK Kindle Fire release date as yet. You can pre-order today in the US.

Amazon Kindle Fire display

The Kindle Fire will have a 7-inch IPS LCD gorilla glass display with 16 million colours. It was heavily rumoured that the Kindle Fire would be a 10-inch tab, but don't write this off for a 2012 launch.

It's 30 times tougher then plastic, while there's 169 pixels per inch (ppi) - that's more than the 132ppi iPad 2 display.

Amazon Kindle Fire processor

The processor inside the Kindle Fire appears to be a Texas Instruments ARM-based dual-core OMAP CPU, though this has not been confirmed by Amazon.

Amazon Kindle Fire interface

The new Kindle tablet will run a special Amazon version of Google's Android OS - but it's not Honeycomb 3.0 it's based upon, but an early version of Android 2.x. There's multitasking as you'd expect from Android.

The UI eschews Android Market in favour of an Amazon-centered experience around Amazon Cloud Player and Cloud Drive.

The top of the display shows your name, while there's a search bar and buttons for newsstand, music videos books, documents, apps and web browser. Below the nav there's a "shelf" for your "most read" videos, books and magazines - it's all in a Cover Flow-style interface.

You'll be able to browse full colour magazines on the device.

Amazon Kindle Fire apps

The browser is called Amazon Silk - it uses Amazon's EC2 computer cluster. Presumably this means Amazon will employ huge processing power (compression) to reduce bandwidth demand on the device and put more processing in the cloud. A bit like Opera's compression tech.

Incredibly, Silk learns your browsing patterns and pre-loads the pages you read the most.

There is a tablet-optimised shopping app on board - this is said to comprise simplified and streamlined pages, so it is easier to buy stuff on than the actual Amazon website.

There will be a number of apps accessible on the device, including Pandora (US), Twitter, Facebook, and Netflix (US).

Amazon Kindle Fire connectivity and storage

The new Kindle Fire will have Wi-Fi, but sadly no 3G. There's also no camera or microphone. Surely Amazon will launch a bigger, better model with these enhancements after Christmas.

There's only 8GB of storage on the device. so there will be a limit to how much content you can store.

There are no physical controls on the front of the device - everything is touch-based. Amazon has also ensured the Kindle Fire features "no cable" synchronisation - as Apple is planning for iOS 5.

Amazon Kindle Fire Whispersync

There's full integration with Amazon's Whispersync tech. As you read a book on any Kindle device or app, your current place is synchronised across all your devices. The same will happen with movies and TV shows now too.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said at the launch: "Customers love Whispersync -- so we thought you know what people would really like? What if Whispersync also worked with movies and TV shows? Well it does.

"When you get home, switch to your big screen TV. Your movie will be right where you left it.

Amazon Kindle Fire weight

The weight of the Kindle Fire is 14.6 oz - 413g. Amazon says that Kindle Fire is "small and light enough to hold in just one hand and carry everywhere you go".

Amazon Kindle Fire music, video and books

The Kindle Fire can access all the content offered by Amazon (so that includes MP3 and video streaming, though not in the UK unless it's announced).

Amazon has said the Kindle Fire will have access to 100,000 movies and TV shows, 17 million songs, Kindle books and "hundreds" of magazines and newspapers.

Amazon Prime Members enjoy instant, unlimited, commercial-free streaming of over 11,000 movies and TV shows at no additional cost. Kindle Fire comes with one free month of Amazon Prime.

There will also be free Amazon Cloud Storage. So that means you'll be able to start a movie on Kindle Fire and transfer it to your TV.

There's also over 100 exclusive graphic novels, including Watchmen, the bestselling - and considered by many to be the greatest - graphic novel of all time, which has never before been available in digital format, as well as Batman: Arkham City, Superman: Earth OneGreen Lantern: Secret Origin and 96 others from DC Entertainment.

Amazon Kindle Fire apps

There's also access to the most popular Android apps and games via the Amazon Android Appstore. That includes apps such as Angry Birds, Plants vs. Zombies, Cut the Rope and more. All apps are Amazon-tested on Kindle Fire.

Amazon Kindle Fire and Amazon Prime

The Kindle Fire will also come complete with a month's trial of Amazon Prime.

We'll bring you a Kindle Fire review as soon as we get our hands on one.

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Gary Marshall: Friendly Fire: why Amazon's going to burn Android

In times of great excitement, I like to paraphrase Noddy Holder - and today is one of those times. Ready?

So here it is, Merry Christmas

Everybody's Having Fun

Apart from all the Android firms

Who are probably chucking themselves off bridges right now

The original was a bit catchier, but you get the gist: unless Amazon's playing a great big joke and the Kindle Fire is as slow as a snail, then as far as the oh-so-lucrative Christmas shopping period in America is concerned Motorola, RIM, HP and the rest might as well pack up and go home.

For Mr and Mrs Punter, choosing a tablet this Christmas means choosing between Apple's one and Amazon's one.

The L word

Jeff Bezos' presentation was awfully reminiscent of an Apple keynote, from the montage of naysayers at the beginning to the "these three pairs of socks won't cost you three pounds, or two pounds - no, these socks are just one pound! Three pairs for a pound!" price announcement at the end.

But the most important similarity was Bezos' use of the L-word. He used it a few times, but the most important one was when Bezos said: "We asked ourselves, is there some way we can bring all of these things together into a remarkable product customers will love?"

I love my Kindle, and I love my iPad. I don't love their processors, or their RAM, or their connectivity options, or any of the other guts. I love their simplicity, and that's why I buy Kindles over other ebook readers and iPads over other tablets. Bezos - and by extension, Amazon - gets that, and the Kindle Fire clearly comes from that philosophy.

This isn't something you'd buy your mum and regret for the next three years as she calls every day with a new tech trouble; this is something you can buy as a present and pretty much forget about it. Can you really say the same about an Asus Eee Pad Transformer? It's a lovely wee tablet for you, or for me - but is it really the right thing for anyone who isn't a geek?

The Kindle Fire doesn't have to be a screamer, or particularly feature-packed: provided it does Facebook, films and Flash, that's good enough for most - and of course, the Kindle Fire does Facebook, films and Flash.

Provided Amazon hasn't made a lemon here - and let's face it, that's pretty unlikely - then the Fire is something you can sell to a non-geek in a single sentence: it's a Kindle that does music, movies, apps and web stuff too.

It's a PlayBook with email and better apps. It's a half-price iPad.

However you choose to describe it, I think you're going to have a hard job getting hold of one. The Kindle Fire's going to fly off the shelves in the same way BlackBerry PlayBooks don't.

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