Kindle Fire Preview
Whatever other shortcomings Amazon might have in their hardware ventures, and these are certainly open to lively debate, they have rarely seemed to have much trouble keeping the details of their intentions hidden from the public eye until they were ready to reveal more.
The press conference expected to clear up all of our questions with regard to the new Kindle Tablet is scheduled for Wednesday and it is only in the past week or so that we’ve really learned anything about the product worth knowing despite months of speculation and supposed leaks. Now, thanks to some reported hands-on experience with the Kindle Fire, as it is now known to be called, solid information has begun to emerge.
In addition to the name, which there is reason to believe begins the institution of a naming scheme among Kindle Tablets should the first be successful enough to justify successors, there is now a selection of technical details. The Kindle Fire will feature a 7” screen, dual-core processor, Amazon’s own homegrown Android fork, and a strongly emphasized connection to Amazon’s many cloud services. For more about the technical side of things, check out Kindle Fire Scoop on BlogKindle.com.
Recent moves to build up the features of Amazon’s many services have made this an even more appealing product recently than was expected. There will obviously be the ability to make use of the standard Kindle platform for reading, but this is not an eReader and reading will be just one function among many. Amazon’s Cloud Player has brought them to a place comparable to that of iTunes in terms of music serving.
Their Cloud Storage has proven reliable for the most part and will serve to offset the low storage space numbers on the tablet itself. The most impressive thing, however, is the Instant Video service. Amazon has been thought to want to emphasize the video capabilities of the Kindle Fire from the start. In the past month they have more than doubled the selection of available titles, both those available for streaming free to Amazon Prime members and those available for purchase, through agreements with the likes of CBS and Fox.
A decent breakdown of the services anticipated and the potential competition situation can be found over at TechCrunch, but suffice it to say that while Apple’s iPad isn’t really likely to feel the pressure this year the same cannot be said for the rest of the Android Tablet Marketplace. This is going to be big.
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