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Kindle Fire : So Much More Than an eBook Reader

2012-01-02T01:12:00.000-08:00

By robertmommie (Cafemom.com) (December 16, 2011)

Kindle Fire : So Much More Than an eBook Reader

People throw around a lot of big phrases when they talk about the Kindle Fire -- "iPad killer" being an oldie but goodie. But after spending some time with the 7-inch Fire, one thing is abundantly clear: this ain't no iPad killer. This right here is something else entirely. Less a "tablet" in the sense we've come to think of it than a content-delivery device, the Kindle Fire is a window to serious, non-stop entertainment consumption. And Amazon shopping. Lots of Amazon shopping.

WHAT'S NEW

Right off the bat, let's agree on one thing: the Kindle Fire is not an "Android tablet" -- not in the way the Xoom and all its Honeycomb successors have been, at least. The Fire is Amazon's closed-platform media viewer, a Kindle with the power of color and touch, a screen on which you can watch, read, and listen to just about anything Amazon has to offer. If you buy the Fire from Amazon, when it arrives at your doorstep, it'll be linked with all your Amazon accounts (Cloud Player, Kindle, Prime, App Store) and allows access to all that content either streaming from the cloud or downloaded to the device itself.

WHAT'S NEW

To start at the beginning, Amazon has rendered setting up the Fire more or less moot; when I first powered it up, it was already linked with my Kindle books, Prime subscription, and one-click payment settings. The selection of music I'd uploaded to my Cloud Player appeared on the Music area, and albums transferred to the device's internal storage with a click apiece.

But syncing isn't just about mirroring content from device to device; it's about making sure all your devices are on the same page, whether or not there are any pages involved. I rented, downloaded and started watching Horrible Bosses on my commute home, left the Fire in my bag, and picked the flick right back up on a Roku box's Amazon app over dinner. That's thanks to Amazon's WhisperSync, which tags your place anytime you're connected to the Web. Video quality was excellent, and the screen is especially good for video: the widescreen display has almost as much screen space as the much larger iPad when watching widescreen video, and it's very clear, bright, and colorful. The debate about reading on an LCD like the Fire's, versus an e-ink display like the other Kindles, rages on, and it's mostly a matter of personal choice.

Physically, the Kindle Fire is nondescript, but not unattractively so. It's just a black square. Perhaps a little chunky, but a comfortable size for carting around, for sure. If you're thinking "what could be the difference between a 7-inch tablet and a 9.7-incher like the iPad, really?" just hold one in your hands. It is significantly smaller, which is better for some things (like reading books) and worse for others (like web browsing or reading magazines).

I realize now that I completely skipped over any discussion of the Fire's user interface -- and with good reason. I didn't even have to think about how to use the Fire; I just kinda...used it. The custom skin Amazon has built over Android is as akin to browsing flesh-and-blood books, discs, and magazines as any I've ever seen. Everything is organized on faux-wooden shelves, as you can see in the top picture. What I was looking at last is on top of the pile -- just as it is on my desk or the floor in front of the nightstand -- and my faves are never far out of reach.

On the homescreen lie two shelves. The first and largest, which Amazon calls the "carousel," is a chronological list of the last places you've been, be they Web pages, books, movies, or tunes. Below that, you pin your favorites (a long press on an item on the carousel offers the option to save things on one of these "shelves"). These can be anything, so I chose my current earworm album, a Prime streaming series I'm working my way through, a book I've been plugging away at, Popular Science, and the New York Times.

WHAT'S BAD

We're told the Fire has a dual-core processor, but sometimes when browsing through the library it didn't quite feel that way. The transition in and out of a piece of content -- a book, TV show, an app -- felt a bit jerky at times, as did spooling through the carousel. And now and again it needs a little extra-hard second tap to realize "hey yeah, she wants to read that, I guess?" Even worse is that jerkiness shows itself when it's least wanted: while reading a book. What exactly about turning pages is too much for a dual-core processor to handle smoothly and naturally?

Speaking of frustration: do you use physical volume keys on your smartphone, iPod, iPad, or assorted other gadgets? Thought so. Me too. You're out of luck on the Fire. Not having a quick toggle to tick up the audio on a loud subway car or to drown out the neighbor's horrific house music is a simple thing that'll surely make you insane. And the lack of a "home" button is downright ridiculous. Imagine you start playing Angry Birds on the subway. The theme song blares, and you scramble to mute it. On any other device: press the "down" volume button. On the Fire: tap the bottom of the screen to bring up the menu, then tap the "settings" button, then tap the "volume" button, then adjust the slider. It's kind of ridiculous.

You'll notice that, save for a quick shout-out to PopSci, I haven't said a word about magazines on the Fire until now. Because reading a magazine on the Fire is a pretty sad experience. Yes, the catalog is extensive and Conde Nast will try to tempt you with three free months of Details and Brides, but they're just PDFs. PDFs that aren't appropriately sized for the Fire's 7-inch screen. Pages fit the width, but not the height, so the text is teeny; zooming in makes things a little larger, but scrolling through stories and columns of text is still impossibly annoying. You don't get that "future of magazines" feeling you get while swiping through such stellar examples as Popular Science on the iPad.

THE PRICE

A very cheap $199. Amazon is actually taking a loss on each of these sold, so we can hardly accuse the price of not being fair.

THE VERDICT

If you're already bought into the Amazon world, which in the Internet age it's hard not to be, and aren't full-force into iOS, the Fire is hard to pass up. It's no iPad, of course, but that's not necessarily a flaw. The Fire does what is says it will, and for the most part it does it quite well. It's instant gratification for nearly any media whim. If there's one thing Amazon knows, it's how to get people what they want, and get it there fast. The Fire, friends, is the perfect portal.

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Amazon Sold Over 4 Million Kindles in December

2011-12-31T01:18:00.000-08:00

By Sean P. Aune (Technobuffalo.com) (December 29, 2011)

Amazon Sold Over 4 Million Kindles in December

Amazon announced this morning via a press release that over four million Kindles were sold in December. As is the way of the ecommerce giant, no specifics were given as to how many of each model were sold, but it did state that the Kindle Fire was the top seller followed by the Kindle Touch and the new standard Kindle.

It wasn’t just Americans, however, that were gobbling up Kindle devices. The company also reported that “Kindle” (they didn’t specify which model) was the best-selling device on their sites in the U.K., Germany, France and Spain. Loading up those devices with books also saw a major jump as the gifting of Kindle E-Books jumped 175 percent between Black Friday and Christmas day over the same time period in 2010. And once everyone unwrapped their new e-Readers, it led to December 25 being the largest day ever for Kindle book downloads.

Some other interesting holiday facts from Amazon were written in amusing ways, and make you wonder what their shipping bill must be like each month.

Amazon customers purchased enough copies of Walter Isaacson’s “Steve Jobs” Book to create a stack taller than Mt. Everest.

The cumulative weight of the Bowflex 552 Adjustable Dumbbells purchased by Amazon customers would outweigh more than 70 adult elephants.

If you unfolded and stacked each pair of jeans purchased by Amazon customers this holiday, the height would be 2,500 times taller than the Statue of Liberty.

Amazon customers purchased enough sweaters to outfit each of Santa’s reindeer during Christmas Eve deliveries for the next 14,000 years.
Amazon customers purchased enough copies of Just Dance 3 to give 15 copies to each person who participated in setting the world record for simultaneous dancing.
Amazon customers purchased enough HeatMax HotHands Handwarmers to give a pair to each resident of Iceland.
Amazon customers purchased enough Rory’s Story Cubes to give a cube to each person watching the New Year’s Eve ball drop live at Times Square.

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Kindle Fire

What is an eBook?

2011-12-31T00:15:00.000-08:00

By Guy Clapperton (BBC.co.uk) (September 9, 2010)

What is an eBook?

Books (and the way they’re read) haven’t changed much over the past few hundred years, but a transformation is now under way. E-Book- downloadable reading matter - are emerging, and they can be a good way of digesting some written material.

Many people say they would never read an E-Book - they like the feel of a normal Book and don’t see why they’d want to give it up. This is reasonable enough, but there are different reasons to read a Book.

Yes, you’d rather curl up with a favourite novel and flick through its pages. But what about a business Book that you’re only reading to make money? Or a ‘how-to’ manual? There are occasions when an E-Book is a good alternative.

How do you Read it?

E-readers (devices which enable you to read your E-Book) come in different formats and the technology is still evolving, so be careful about the one you buy.

They are available from manufacturers including Sony, Amazon, Cool-ER and Apple (who make the iPad).

You’ll need to check that the Book you want to read is compatible with the e-Reader you’re going to choose, otherwise you might end up with an ebook that you can't read. There are several sites which advise on compatibility of E-Book files and readers, including ebooks.com, .

Once you’ve set up your account, buying and downloading is easy. Just click and it will download your E-Book and then install it on your e-Reader, which you should connect to your computer with (usually) a USB cable. You can then take the E-Book with you and read it! And once you’re accustomed to the screen, it’s easy to forget you’ve done it electronically.

The only downside of an E-Book is when you want to lend it to a friend. If you like to lend and borrow Books, then you may yet be better off with a good old-fashioned paper-and-ink edition. And if you’re the type who leaves Books on the bus, then you probably won’t want to risk doing that with an expensive E-Book.

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Kindle Fire

5 Reasons to Buy Kindle Fire

2011-12-30T01:32:00.000-08:00

By Ven (Gadgetsera.com) (December 30, 2011)

5 Reasons to Buy Kindle Fire Tablet

The recent release from Amazon is the series of low cost and feature rich Kindles. This Kindle Fire Tablet is one among the series and this is a high feature Tablet. Interestingly, the price of this Tablet is very less compared to any other Tablet PCs in the market, right from iPad to Xoom. The features of this Tablet are great like any other Amazon’s product and added features specific to Amazon users. Hence i looked into the reasons to buy this Tablet than any other model.

Go through the recent article on, Kindle Fire Tablet review which clearly tells everything about this Tablet. In this article, i will discuss the important reasons to buy this Tablet or in other words, the special features to look into this Kindle.

1st : Amazon Whispersync

Amazon Whispersync is a synchronization technology used in this Tablet. The idea is to stream the audio/video content from the Tablet to external devices or other kindles. For example, you could play your favorite movie from the Tablet and in between, you could resume the playback on your HDTV. You don’t need to stop the playback on the Tablet, it just streams the content seamlessly to HDTV.

You could access the Amazon store ebook on multiple Kindles. It synchronizes the bookmarks and you could read from different Kindles using the same login account.

This feature helps with seamless connectivity among multiple Kindles.

2rd : Silk Browser Technology

Amazon’s Silk Browser uses the new AWS (Amazon Web Service) cloud to provide great access/performance browsing. It has smart caching feature which serves the user with any complex web page faster. You could zoom in/out on this browser window by simply pinching and double tapping with your fingers.

Important: Silk browser supports the famous Flash file format. The official page has more detailed information.

3nd : EC2 Cloud Content Access

With the help of Elastic Cloud, this kindle has the capability to pull the content simultaneously faster. That means, the Kindle utilizes the computing power of EC2 and delivers the content faster. By just transferring the complex processing or tasks to EC2 server, the Kindle conserves less power and battery life extends.

It also understands the network condition, the type of streaming content and works appropriately to deliver better performance to the users.

You get access to 18 million movies, TV shows, apps, games, songs, books, newspapers, audiobooks, magazines, and docs.

4th : 7″ Display Screen

This Tablet is comfortable to keep in hand because of this size and weighs only ~413 grams. The screen measures 7″ – the latest preferred size by many of the Tablet users. It supports high resolution up to 1024×600 with 16 million colors display.

The screen is high quality because it is 30 times harder than normal plastic and better accident proof.

5th : Here It Goes .. Low Cost

All these great features are accessible with less cost, when compared to other Tablet PCs in the market.

Apple iPad2 : approx $519
Xoom : approx $499
Acer Tab : approx $499
Samsung Tab : approx $499

Finally, cost comes to $199 only.

(now see the official page of Kindle Fire Tablet)

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Kindle Fire

Amazon.com "Happy New Year 2012"

2011-12-25T22:56:00.001-08:00

Buy Kindle Now!

2011-12-24T06:15:00.000-08:00

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Review: Kindle Fire it’s no iPad killer

2011-12-23T03:00:00.000-08:00

By Zach Epstein (November 22, 2011)

Kindle Fire's no iPad killer, and that is why it will succeed

Amazon has been a leader in the eBook reader space since it first introduced the Kindle eReader in November 2007. At that point in time, the Kindle had a 6-inch E Ink display that supported just four shades of gray, it included 250MB of storage that could accommodate about 200 eBooks, and it retailed for $399. For the first six months or so, Amazon couldn’t keep the device in stock — it was a smash hit.

Since then, Kindles have gotten thinner and lighter, and the current-generation model features a dramatically improved E Ink Pearl display and 2GB of storage. Amazon’s Kindle can now be had for as little as $79. A second model with a touchscreen display and twice the memory starts at just $99, and its battery lasts for up to two months on a single charge. Amazon doesn’t share sales volumes of its Kindle devices but the company is widely believed to be among the top eReader vendors in the world as it teeters between the No.1 and No.2 spots alongside Barnes & Noble.

But eReaders will only take Amazon so far.

Amazon has been a leader in the online retail space for quite some time, and its line of Kindle eReaders represents its first foray into the hardware game. EBooks are big business for Amazon, but its more recent service additions have also been gaining traction. With new options for purchasing and streaming music and movies, customers had to rely on third party devices — computers, connected TVs, set top boxes and smartphones — to consume this new wave of Amazon content. But why not make it all available on a single Amazon-branded device that picks up where the Kindle left off?

The tablet market posed an amazing opportunity for Amazon. I can’t even recall the last time a market segment saw so much hype and so few success stories, and Amazon identified an opportunity to succeed where others were failing. Instead of building hardware that merely acted as a platter on which to serve the same software countless other vendors were unsuccessfully banking on, Amazon would build an end-to-end experience that covered hardware, software and content. After all, the only other vendor whose tablet offering addresses all three of these crucial areas of the user experience seems to be doing pretty well in the tablet space it redefined in early 2010.

Instead of setting out to build an iPad killer, Amazon set out to build a Kindle Fire.

The term “iPad killer” seems to describe any tablet launched by a popular vendor that cannot draw traffic to a news site unless said site includes a mention of Apple’s iPad in the headlines of stories written about said tablet. That’s really the only discernable link I’ve found between all of the slates that have been deemed iPad killers thus far. Another attribute most of them share, unfortunate though it may be, is that they don’t sell particularly well. There have been a few notable exceptions but in general, it seems these tablets are not well received by consumers or by enterprise customers.

If an iPad killer is a tablet that doesn’t grab people’s attention and often doesn’t sell particularly well, then the Kindle Fire is most certainly not an iPad killer.

Leading up to Amazon’s Kindle Fire, media tablets had for the most part been ill-conceived devices that were seemingly rushed out the door in an effort to capitalize on the hype surrounding the iPad. This strategy is not uncommon in business but in this particular case, companies forgot a key ingredient that drives competition: differentiation. With high price points, similar hardware and lackluster first-generation software (Honeycomb was Google’s first attempt at a tablet OS), the bulk of the iPad’s competition had very little to offer the common consumer that might distinguish it from the iPad in a positive way.

The Kindle Fire is a different beast.

Amazon attacked the tablet market on two fronts. First, it offered differentiation. Google’s Android operating system powers the Fire, but one wouldn’t know it to look at the device. Amazon used the open source Android OS as the framework on which it built its own unique user experience. It will continue its own development of the platform independent of Google’s future builds, and it maintains its own ecosystem outside of Google’s. Amazon has its own app store and its own suite of services.

The other piece to the Kindle Fire puzzle is pricing. At $199, Amazon’s tablet is $300 cheaper than the entry-level iPad and $630 less expensive than the 64GB model with embedded 3G. This was a very smart move by Amazon. The company will release more expensive models in the future — BGR exclusively reported preliminary details surrounding a 10-inch model due to be released next year — but Amazon’s first effort hits an amazing price point that creates a new space in the tablet market. It doesn’t compete with the iPad any more than a 32-inch flat panel Vizio TV competes with a 60-inch Samsung model. It’s a completely different animal.

I have read a number of Kindle Fire reviews — and there were plenty to choose from — that went to great lengths to compare Amazon’s tablet to the iPad. While these comparisons sometimes made for compelling reads and even more compelling headlines, they were not very useful. These devices are both tablets, yes, but to liken one to the other is as useful as likening a Mercedes S Class to a Hyundai Sonata. Both vehicles will get you from A to B, but in reality they serve very different purposes.

The S Class is designed to attract a certain type of customer. It offers utility, luxury and a driving experience that is the result of decades of evolution and many tens of millions of dollars in research and development. The S Class is designed to be seen. It outclasses and outperforms much of the competition, but it is about form as much as it is function. It is also assembled from high-end parts and materials, and it carries a relatively steep price tag to match. You see hundreds of them everywhere you go in metropolitan areas, but unless you have expendable income to throw around, you probably won’t buy one yourself.

The Sonata is designed to make a well-styled, capable sedan accessible to the masses. It looks more refined and performs better than other cars in its price range, and it also offers standard features that competing models do not. Even still, it doesn’t pretend to be an S Class and it most certainly doesn’t set out to kill the S Class.

The Sonata’s body isn’t quite as sleek and sophisticated as the Mercedes sedan, and it doesn’t come with nearly as many standard features. Its interior is also much more modest, forgoing supple leather and expensive woods in favor of more pedestrian materials. It won’t accelerate as quickly, it won’t corner as surely and it probably won’t turn any heads. It is a phenomenal value, however, and it touts a build quality and features that are anything but common on such an affordable car.

After using the device for about a week and a half now, I believe Amazon’s Kindle Fire will succeed where others have failed. The hardware is good but not great. The soft-touch materials are comfortable in the hand but the 4,400 mAh battery that hides within the device makes it a bit too heavy for prolonged reading without resting the tablet on a table or leg. The software is good but not great. It has a nice, simple interface that a wide range of users will be able to navigate easily, but it is not refined. The performance is good but not great. Many functions are fluid, as is game play and video playback, but there are often of hiccups and stutters while opening certain apps and performing other functions.

What did you expect? It’s a Sonata.

At $200, the Kindle Fire is a fantastic buy. It is intuitive and capable, and the integration with Amazon services is well-done. The home screen is divided into four sections: first is a status pane across the top that displays notifications, the time, Wi-Fi status and battery charge, and it provides access to settings. A menu section follows beneath, allowing users to navigation between different core features such as the book reader, music player, apps menu and video player. Next is a large area that lists all recent apps and books in a cover flow-like stream. Finally, there is a favorites section near the bottom where users can pin their most frequently accessed apps and books.

Each integrated app — Books, Music, Video and so on — is split into two sections that can be toggled at the top of the screen. The first is “Cloud,” which displays a list of icons on the shelves beneath it that represent all of the user’s content stored on Amazon’s servers. The second is “Device,” which lists locally stored content. There is also a link to Amazon’s store in the top right corner of each page. While it is all too easy to spend money on the Kindle Fire, I love how well Amazon’s services are integrated into each app.

While on the front page of the Books app, a single tap on an icon opens the book of my choice while a tap on the always-visible store link lets me search, browse and purchase books with ease. The Music app lists all of my content available for playback, and then another Store link takes me to Amazon’s music shop where I can purchase albums or individual tracks. The Video app offers a similar experience, but it also offers integration with Amazon Prime video streaming, Amazon’s Netflix-like service that provides unlimited access to streaming movies and TV shows. Don’t expect to find many new blockbuster movies in there, but the catalog is deep enough to provide a decent range of content.

Amazon’s apps page adheres to the same intuitive format. Apps are organized across wood shelves and a link to the Amazon Appstore can be found in the top right corner. Users won’t have access to all of the content found in Google’s Android Marketplace, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Like Apple’s iOS App Store, the Marketplace is packed with garbage. Amazon’s curated approach is appreciated and there is more than enough great content available. I also love that Amazon offers one new paid app for free each day. It makes checking the app store on a daily basis habitual, thus encouraging browsing and ultimately benefiting developers.

The web browser is another bright spot for the Kindle Fire. Amazon’s Silk browser is impressively quick thanks to technology that offloads much of the grunt work to remote servers. Heavy pages seem to take a moment to begin loading as a result, but once the cloud-based portion begins pushing content to the tablet, I find pages load faster than they do on other comparable devices.

The Kindle Fire is not an iPad killer. It doesn’t kill anything, in fact. What it does, however, is offer users a solid experience and a comprehensive catalog of services that make it easy to access existing content and to find new content. It is very, very easy to use, which is something that cannot be said of some other tablets. A young child will be flying around the UI in no time, and his or her grandparents likely won’t take long to figure it out either. Operation is relatively smooth for the most part, but prospective buyers should expect the occasional hiccup from first-generation software running on $200 hardware. Every computer, smartphone and tablet on the planet stutters from time to time, so this is hardly a big deal.

Amazon took its time with the Kindle Fire and it shows. There is plenty of room for improvement, but this first-generation tablet is an intuitive, functional tablet that is as cohesive as it is affordable. It was built as a gateway into the many web-based services Amazon now offers and it succeeds in its mission. It might not kill any Apple products on its way to your door, but I’m sure the media will find plenty more Apple killers in the new year to draw your clicks. In the meantime, the Kindle Fire is a clear winner that will likely find itself atop Amazon’s list of best-sellers for quite some time.

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Review : Kindle Fire vs iPad 2, Compare their Specs

2011-12-22T22:30:00.000-08:00

By squidoo.com

Advantages of iPad2

More internal storage
Has a camera
Huge variety of apps is available for iPad 2
Well established (you know what you get)

Advantages of Kindle Fire

Native Flash Support
Native PDF & DOC formats support
Has USB 2.0 port
Free month of Amazon Prime
Free cloud storage for all your Amazon content
No iTunes (that program is such a punishment)
Very affordable at $199

Summary for KD-eBook.info : Kindle Fire is Simply the Best

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Review : Reasons to Buy A Kindle Fire

2011-12-22T01:53:00.000-08:00

By TabletMoz

Reasons to Buy A Kindle Fire

Most of us like gadgets and are keen to know about what are the new gadgets launched in the market. Tablet PC is one such category which gets refreshed very frequently and is always in news. Stay away from the news for a few days and you will realize how much is happening in this field and so frequently. A great device that is creating buzz in the gadget lovers’ circle is the new Kindle Fire by Amazon. Interestingly, the price of Kindle Fire is very less as compared to any other Tablet PCs in the market.

This is definitely a great reason to buy the new Amazon Kindle Fire. But there are many more reasons to buy this superb Kindle Fire. Here are some great facts and specs about the gadget.

It’s Make

The Kindle Fire is a wonderful tablet PC presented by Amazon. The OS it uses is the very latest Android 2.3. The device is compact and convenient to carry and one can hold it with a single hand. Plus, it is extremely light in weight (14.6oz or 413g). This sleek device is about 7 inches long and 4 and a half inches wide and comes with awesome display and touch screen for you to enjoy the experience to the fullest. It supports high resolution up to 1024×600 with 16 million colors display. The screen is high quality as it is 30 times harder than normal plastic and hence highly durable.

Faster Processor

The tablet from the house of Amazon uses the latest Dual Core processor which takes its performance to great heights. It not only works faster but much more efficiently which talks high of the quality of experience you will have while working on this device. Its makers, Amazon are supporting the Kindle Fire with some amazing stuff. It gives you free access to the Android applications store as well as that of Kindle’s. You can also access Prime instant video and Amazon MP3. This device is sure to continue the legacy of other wonderful gadgets by Amazon.

Easy to Carry

The compact yet practically built of the Kindle Fire really appeals to the eyes of the user. It’s built in such a way that you can work on it or watch a video or read a book without any difficulty. It weighs just about 14.6 ounces which means you can just tuck it into your bag no matter where you are going. Normally people worry about such gadgets easily getting damaged, but that’s not true with Fire. The Touch screen is chemically treated in such a way that it has 20 times the strength of a normal display. To protect the tablet from any damage, the Amazon website is offering a multi-layered protective case which will shield it to a great extent from drops and scratches.

Amazon Silk

The browser used by the Kindle Fire is called Silk. It is specially designed by Amazon to enhance the performance of their tablet. The architecture used to develop this browser is called “split browser” which is supported by Amazon Cloud (Amazon EC2). In a layman’s term, the technology helps the device to upload videos or music or even live shows much faster and clearer than usual. Isn’t that great news that you will be getting something extra out of the usual stuff at lightening fast speed!

Amazon Silk—Amazon's Revolutionary Cloud-Accelerated Web Browser

Storage on Cloud

The Amazon Kindle Fire has a built in memory capacity of 8GB. This is approximately 100 movies or about 1000 eBooks. The device offers so much that this large memory will fall short. Its makers, Amazon who already know this fact have decided to support Fire with the unlimited storage on Amazon Cloud. This means that you don’t have to worry about how much space a game or a video or an eBook may consume as you are being supported by unlimited space.

Amazon Multimedia

Do not look any further while searching for a song or a game. The Amazon Store is a great collection of multimedia elements like newspapers, magazines, apps, games, photos and what not. You will also be treated with a huge collection of about 18 million songs, games, movies and even television shows. Now you get to watch all that is famous on TV. They can be streamed live, downloaded from the internet, bought or even rented for a particular period. Once the Kindle Fire is in your hand, you will forget both Television and movie theatre as all your entertainment will be found at one destination and that is the Fire.

User Friendly

The Kindle Fire looks sophisticated but it’s not complex at all. On the other hand the manufacturers have designed the device in such a way that they are able to reach as many consumers as possible. Its operations are very simple, hassle free and absolutely uncomplicated. It will take the least amount of time for a user to get used to the smooth operations of the Fire and once they get comfortable with it, there is no stopping them. It is capable of assisting you in making notes, presentations and maintaining good amount of data. For this you may call it your personal assistant. But if the consumer is not a technoholic, even for them the Fire will prove to be suitable. Execute your simple tasks of checking emails, surfing the net and collecting information from the internet with the help of the Kindle Fire.

Good Battery

The battery capacity of the Kindle Fire is approximately eight hours. Videos can be viewed without any worry for almost 7 hr and the reading capacity is about 8 hr in general. To recharge the battery completely, one needs to plug it into power for about 4 hr continuously.

Economical Price

The biggest plus point of the Kindle Fire is its unbelievable price tag. This awesome, multi-tasking gadget is offered at just $199. Though it’s not in the market yet, you can place the orders online. This means that Amazon has taken other tablet PC makers head on and priced their quality product at a very reasonable price. After this detailed analysis I am sure you would want to own a Kindle Fire of your own. It will be out in the market from 15th Nov. It sure is an unmatched combination of quality and economy.

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Review : Kindle Touch

2011-12-22T00:02:00.000-08:00

By Scot Finnie (November 23, 2011)

Kindle Touch review: A dramatic improvement over the Kindle3 (Kindle Keyboard)

Kindle Touch

The Kindle Touch was all I had eyes for. When Amazon announced a whole new line of Kindles, it seemed that everyone was jazzed about the new Kindle Fire. Not me. As an iPad 2 and Xoom owner, Fire would be a downgrade for me. But I've been a confirmed e-reader user since the release of Kindle 2. The first touch screen Kindle, smaller and lighter because it lacks a physical keyboard, was irresistible to me.

With the Kindle 3, now known as "Kindle Keyboard," Amazon perfected the e-reader so far as I'm concerned. While others fuss about color, my focus has always been size, weight, contrast and legibility. I've been reading books for a few decades now, and very few of them have been in color. For magazine reading, I definitely opt for the iPad (or paper).

Kindle3 or Kindle Keyboard

Because I'm very happy with the Kindle 3, I didn't need the Kindle Touch. But several things intrigued me. For one thing, being able to advance pages with a quick tap almost anywhere on the screen had a strong appeal. No longer would my fingers cramp up while poised over the narrow Kindle 3 page-advance button. I've also often wished there were no physical keyboard on the Kindle. I just don't use it often enough to tote around the dedicated hardware. Amazon's marketing materials also called the new touch screen the best E-Ink screen ever. Finally, the anchoring hardware for Amazon's Kindle 3 lighted case was plagued by design issues and the new design is supposed to be better. According to the specs, the Kindle Touch and its new lighted case are lighter than their third-generation counterparts.

Opening the box

I ordered the new $139 Kindle Touch "without special offers" as soon as it was offered and received it on November 16. After opening the box, my first impressions were positive. The Kindle Touch is noticeably smaller. Holding it in your hand, it feels solid, adding to an overall perception of quality. At a glance, the back looks like brushed aluminum but it has a warm, hard rubber-like feel that offers better grip than metal. The new Kindle is also noticeably thicker. The bezel sticks up, away from the screen like a picture frame. That added thickness of the reveal presumably helps prevent accidental screen touches. In the product photos, what looks like a small series of horizontal speaker vents just under the screen is actually the Home button. According to its specs, the Kindle Touch weighs an ounce less than the Kindle Keyboard (Kindle 3 Wi-Fi). I couldn't discern a weight difference by weighing them in my hands at the same time.

The next thing I noticed was that Amazon no longer includes a power adapter in the box. Purchasing one separately will set you back $10 plus a delivery charge. The Touch comes with a USB cable so you can charge it by plugging it into your computer, but Amazon cheaped out without giving much notice to its customers. If you have a previous generation Kindle, the power adapters are the same. My wife and I have four other Kindles in the house, so this wasn't a problem for me.The Kindle Touch also doesn't come with a printed getting-started manual.

The design of the Kindle Touch hardware might be described as minimalist compared to previous generations. There are just two buttons on the Touch (on/off and Home) and two ports (power and headphones). The blizzard of tiny keyboard keys, which I never liked, are gone -- replaced by a virtual keyboard. Although I haven't had trouble with it, the power button is no longer a slide switch; you depress it. Located as it is on the bottom of the Kindle, it might be possible to turn it on and off by accident if you were to prop it up on a hard surface, but that's unlikely to be an issue for most people.

The first time I compared the Touch's display quality with that of the Kindle 3, I was taken aback by the impression that the Touch was slightly lacking in that all-important department. But after making adjustments to the font style and spacing to match the settings on the Kindle 3, it became clear that the two screens are comparable. In subsequent comparisons under several different lighting conditions that perception has remained constant.

Getting in touch

The new Kindle's touch screen performs very well for reading. It's far more convenient to simply tap the screen to turn the page than to locate and press any of the various button designs of previous Kindle models. To get a word's dictionary definition, just long press it.

The touch screen is divided into three invisible touch zones. Press anywhere in a band running across the top edge of the screen to reveal the menu bar, which offers a back button, a shopping button, the search field and a menu button for accessing the settings. At the same time, a bar appears along the bottom of the screen offering buttons for font settings, go to and the new X-Ray feature.

Almost all the space on the screen below the menu band is devoted to the page-advance touch zone. The only exception to that is a roughly a one-inch column hugging the left edge of the screen that serves as the page-back touch zone. My initial concern was that, when using my left hand, I might accidentally page back when attempting to page forward. But that didn't prove to be a problem at all. In fact, the only trouble I have with the touch screen concerns the buttons on dialogs and the virtual keyboard. The activation area feels too small to me. Once in a while I find myself having to press buttons two or three times before they work. But in the most important ways, Amazon got its first touch screen right.

Amazon's new cover with reading lamp

After what seemed like a long wait, I can now read with my Kindle Touch in bed at night because its Amazon lighted case finally arrived. The cover is fairly light. It uses a pop-in plastic backing that holds the e-reader snugly in place. Hefting the K3 with cover and the Touch with cover side by side, the Touch felt slightly but noticeably lighter. The electrical connection between the new cover's lamp and the Kindle Touch is a much better design than that of the previous generation. Probably the best improvement is that, because the lamp is closer to the screen and centered above it, the light is both a tad brighter and far more uniform. Although I was not put off by the somewhat uneven lighting off the earlier lighted case, I know some people were.

Despite the improvements, I was disappointed in the Touch lighted case, preferring the design of the Kindle 3's lighted case for three reasons: 1.) There is no closing mechanism at all on the new cover, such as the strap on the previous generation Amazon cover. 2.) With the lamp on, if you hold the Kindle even slightly above eye level, the LED bulb shines straight into your eyes -- which is both distracting and hard on the eyes. 3.) The back of the cover has deeply curved edges (mirroring the design of the K Touch itself) and the outside material on the front and back of the cover are flat and smooth. As a result, the new lighted cover isn't as easy to grip as the old one. One additional negative: I settled for tan but I didn't like any of the colors the new cover comes in.

Those caveats aside, I'm having no significant trouble using the new case. Perhaps the eventual next-gen lighted case will strike a better balance of features and functionality.

It's the software

Amazon was forced to heavily modify its operating system software for the touch interface. But it didn't just remake the existing OS to work with touch. Some screens and dialogs are organized very differently. Some things are even missing. The voice guide feature on the Kindle Keyboard and other non-touch Kindles isn't available on the Kindle Touch. When you think about it that makes sense. Voice navigation was primarily designed as an aid to the visually impaired, who can feel their way around physical buttons but not so much a touch screen.

Another missing feature is the page-rotation functionality, which allowed you to view the page in the landscape orientation. It was great for images, maps, documents and PDFs. It's not clear why Amazon decided to eliminate this feature.

Amazon also decided to limit web browsing to its own site for Touch owners using 3G to connect to the Internet, but the browser works anywhere with Wi-Fi. One of the advantages of the Kindle Touch web browser is that it supports in and out zooms using finger expand and contract gestures.

When you're reading a book, Touch shows Amazon's Location number in the lower left corner and the percentage-read number on the lower right. For books that support page numbers, you can see the page number by pressing the menu bar. Why can't Amazon display the page number, when supported, without having to press the menu bar?

The last word

Despite a couple of minor peccadilloes, such as the lack of power adapter, I'm very impressed by the Kindle Touch. I wasn't sure they could make a great thing even better, but they did. The Touch's killer feature is tap-screen page turns. Once you try it, you're going to have a hard time settling for less. What's more, the reduction in size of the Touch is a significant improvement. Because Kindle screens all have a matte finish to cut down on reflections, the Kindle Touch doesn't even show fingerprints.

The Kindle Touch is the best reading device I've ever used. The touch interface is the perfect tool for this job. I have loved the Kindle 3, but with the arrival of the Touch, it is firmly relegated to backup status.

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Review : Kindle Fire Video Review

2011-12-21T20:32:00.000-08:00

By kindlefirestore (September 28, 2011)

Kindle Fire full review - New Amazon tablet specifications price:199$ Only

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Poll : will you buy the Kindle Fire?

2011-12-21T20:02:00.000-08:00

By wsj.com

Amazon.com Inc. unveiled the Kindle Fire tablet computer, the latest-and possibly biggest-challenger to Apple Inc.'s dominant iPad. Priced at $199, the Fire tablet has a 7-inch screen and can access Amazon's app store, streaming movies and TV shows, the company said. By comparison, the lowest price for a new iPad is $499.

Total votes: 13,463 votes

Yes: 8,714 votes (64.7%)

No: 4,749 votes (35.3%)

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What Kindle Fire has to offer? (Specs)

2011-12-21T02:16:00.000-08:00

By squidoo.com

The Kindle Fire specifications:

Display: 7 inches

Weight: 4.6 ounces (413 grams)

Screen Type: Color touch screen (two finger multi-touch)

Operating System: Customized Android

Internal Storage: 8GB + Cloud Storage

Camera: No

WiFi: Yes

Apps: from Amazon Appstore

Browser: Amazon Silk - special super fast brower for Kindle Fire

Supports streaming video

Supported File Formats:

Kindle (AZW)
TXT
PDF
unprotected MOBI
PRC natively
Audible (Audible Enhanced (AA, AAX))
DOC, DOCX
JPEG
GIF
PNG
BMP
non-DRM AAC
MP3
MIDI
OGG
WAV
MP4
VP8

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The Kindle : 2 Million Sold In 2 Weeks

2011-12-20T23:50:00.000-08:00

By Josh Wolford (December 2, 2011)

Amazon’s Kindle Fire : It’s so hot right now.

According to one market researcher, the Amazon has already sold 850,000 Kindle Fires directly from Amazon.com. When you factor in sales from other retailers like Best Buy, he says that Amazon has likely sold 2 million or more units since its official launch on November 15th. Two million in two weeks is a pretty strong start for the new tablet.

According to that analyst, Carter Nicholas of eDataSource, the swing in sales from the pre-sale period to the post-launch period has been substantial. “Trendwise, sales are picking up if you compare second half of November to second half of October, the rate of sales is up 63%.”

Amazon has been unsurprisingly tight-lipped about the actual Kindle Fire sales figures. The only real information nugget that they’ve given us about the tablet is that it’s a top seller. Actually, the top seller across the whole site. As part of a press release concerning Black

Friday sales, Amazon reported that all members of the Kindle family were off to a great start this holiday season – the Kindle Fire in particular.

  “Even before the busy holiday shopping weekend, we’d already sold millions of the new Kindle family and Kindle Fire was the bestselling product across all of Amazon.com,” they said. The Kindle Fire has been the top-selling item on the site since in was introduced way back in September.

So it looks like the Kindle Fire, with its experimental Silk browser and super-affordable $199 price tag, is on its way to becoming a real holiday hit. And if these figures prove accurate, it’s well on its way to grabbing the number #2 tablet spot.

Of course, it would still be behind the king – the iPad. Is it possible that the Kindle Fire could significantly cut into the iPad’s market this holiday season? That depends on your definition of the word significant.

J.P. Morgan analyst Mark Moskowitz is slightly reducing his iPad sales estimate this quarter. He is shaving them down to 13 million, from 13.3 million. This relatively small decrease is being attributed to not only production slowdowns – but the impact of the Kindle Fire. Apparently, the $199 price tag is the leading factor in people’s decision to go with the Amazon tablet.
But price tag isn’t everything, and the Kindle Fire can’t fully compete with the the iPad on a lot of fronts – speed and features mainly. But there’s no doubt that the Kindle Fire is off to a hot start.

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Review : Kindle Fire, What is it Good for?

2011-12-20T04:11:00.000-08:00

By Erick Schonfeld (November 25, 2011)

When the Kindle Fire first shipped a couple weeks ago, the reviews were mixed. Uncle Walt calls it good, but not great. David Pogue at the NYT thinks it is “sluggish,” lacking “polish or speed.” But the Kindle Fire is still selling like hotcakes. Some reviewers are disappointed that it is not an iPad, but that is the wrong way to look at it. The Fire is a standout media tablet that does a few things very well and I am going to tell you what they are.

I’ve been using a Kindle Fire for the past two weeks (that is, when my kids or wife haven’t absconded to another room with it). The device passes my first test: my family fights over it. The Fire is kid-tested, and mother-approved. Fruit Ninja is the new obsession with my young children. Even my two-year-old, who loves the iPad, is increasingly eyeing the Kindle Fire and scheming ways to get her Mom out of the room so she can play with it. My wife will have none of that, she’s reading Joan Didion’s latest book on the Fire. I sneak it away from the bedside table when everyone is asleep at night to watch old episodes of Arrested Development.

The Kindle Fire is purpose-built to find and consume digital media: books, movies and TV shows, music, magazines, apps, and the web. It is more limited in its capabilities than an iPad, but in these areas it holds its own. Let me address each of these areas individually:

Reading

A better comparison than the iPad is to other Kindles. I’ve been playing with a Kindle Touch as well, and the responsiveness of the screen is so temperamental that it is frustrating for me to use. The flicker of the E Ink screen in between every page turn also gives me a headache. No, if you are going to buy a Kindle buy the Kindle Fire. It is much better, even for reading digital books and magazines. The New Yorker magazine looks great on it.

Yes, I know backlit screens are not as good for your eyes as E Ink, but who are we kidding? Many of us are staring at screens for 8 to 12 hours a day. I, for one, am used to it and find backlit screens more readable than E Ink. It also is much easier to highlight passages or look something up on the web straight from the text.

The Kindle Fire also blows away the iPad as a digital book reader (as you would hope it would, coming from Amazon). Mostly, that is because of its smaller form factor. It is about the size of a large paperback. You can hold it in one hand and flick through the pages with your thumb. It is a much more pleasurable reading experience than the larger iPad, which is a little unwieldy by comparison for extended reading periods. Although, the Kindle app on the iPad is otherwise perfectly fine.

Watching

Despite its smaller screen size, the Fire is an excellent video viewing device. It ties in directly to Amazon’s Instant Video store, where you can either buy or rent video downloads. The selection is pretty decent, with a mix of old and more recent movies and TV shows. You can either stream the movies directly or download them for later viewing. I’ve had no issues with streaming. The pictures are sharp and I’ve watched entire episodes without any hiccups over a strong WiFi connection.

You can also watch movies through Netflix or Hulu Plus, which both have apps available on the Fire. But if you are an Amazon Prime member (all-you-can-eat shipping for $79 a year), you get Instant Video thrown in. That’s a good deal, considering that the Netflix streaming-only plan costs $96 a year, and you don’t get free shipping of any Christmas gifts with that.

The one drawback of watching video on the Fire is that it is a solitary experience. The small screen size does not detract from the viewing experience when you are holding it in your lap and watching alone, but it’s not great for watching a show or movie with someone else. It is the video equivalent of reading over someone’s shoulder. And there is no easy way that I can tell of projecting the video on a bigger screen like you can with Airplay on the iPad.

Listening

Quite frankly, I barely notice the music store on the Kindle Fire. There is nothing wrong with the selection, and I applaud the way it distributes MP3 tunes that are compatible with any player. But when it comes to digital music that I purchase, I am just too locked into iTunes (or streaming music services) to want to bother with the Amazon Music Store. It is too much of a hassle to figure out how to get the music into iTunes, where I can listen to it on my iPhone or through my stereo.

Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t want to walk around listening to an album on the Fire with my headphones plugged in. It’s not like you can go on a run with it. And listening through the Fire’s external speakers, while perfectly fine for a movie, is not the ideal listening experience. The one use-case where music does make sense is if you want to listen to something while you are reading or browsing the web on the Fire.

Browsing

The Fire’s Silk browser is supposed to accelerate browsing on the device by pre-caching pages in the cloud and delivering them more intelligently. The browser is fast and functional, but from what I can tell it is no faster than the browser on an iPad. I tested about half a dozen web pages. If there is a difference in page-loading speeds, it is not noticeable.

In the Web browsing department, the iPad bigger screen size gives it the advantage. You are not squinting as much as you do on a mobile phone’s browser, but you squint nonetheless. I find myself pinching and zooming a lot to read webpages. The tabbed browsing on the Fire, however, is a plus.

Playing

Finally, there are the apps. The Fire only ships with a few thousand apps available for download, compared to more than 200,000 for the iPad. But Amazon has done an excellent job to make sure that many of these first apps are excellent. Games like Fruit Ninja and Angry Birds, while not unique to the Fire, are addictive and show off its graphics capabilities. Media apps like Netflix, Hulu Plus, and Pandora expand its entertainment capabilities. Some “apps” like Facebook and Twitter merely redirect to their HTML5 mobile websites through the browser, but I suspect they will get full-fledged apps in time.

More importantly, the store, is much better organized and easier to browse than the official Android Market. If the Kindle Fire becomes the most popular Android tablet, as I suspect it will, then it could also become the biggest distributor of Android apps. Amazon’s app store finally brings a shopping and discovery experience to Android in much the same way that iTunes did for iOS apps.

The best apps are still on the iPad and will continue to appear there first, but you are not giving up apps by going with a Kindle Fire. And they are just going to keep getting better the more people flock to the Fire, a device where buying media, including apps, is encouraged.

People are not going to buy the Kindle Fire because of any of its specs. They are going to buy it because it eases them into the still-strange realm of digital books, movies, magazines, and apps. These are all media. The Fire makes it easy to find them and, more importantly, easy to pay for them. You hardly think twice about it.

The ability to pack all your media into one little 7-inch device is still an incredible thing. But it is not just your media that makes it compelling. It is the access to Amazon’s vast and growing digital library of millions of books, movies, apps, and songs, all at your fingertips and one click away from your consuming eyes. If you do end up buying a Kindle Fire, I guarantee that you will end up spending a lot more than the subsidized $200 price of the device on media. And once you start buying digital media for the Fire, you won’t be going anywhere. Amazon will have you as a customer for life, if it doesn’t already.

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What is Kindle Fire

2011-12-19T21:12:00.000-08:00

**What is Kindle Fire?**

The Kindle Fire is a tablet computer version of Amazon.com's Kindle e-book reader. Announced on September 28, 2011, the Kindle Fire has a color 7" multi-touch display with IPS technology and runs a forked version of Google's Android operating system. The device - which includes access to the Amazon Appstore, streaming movies and TV shows, and Kindle's e-books - was released on November 14 , 2011.

The Kindle Fire retails for US$199. Estimates of the device's initial bill of materials ranged from $150 to $190, with one analyst estimating a total production cost of $201.70. Analysts have projected the device to be a strong competitor to Apple's iPad, that other Android device makers will suffer lost sales and that Amazon's business strategy is to make money on selling digital content and physical goods sold through the company's online store.

The Kindle Fire's external dimensions are 7.5×4.7×0.45 inch (190×120×11 mm), with the visible area of the screen a little smaller than a standard 4×6" photograph.

Analysts estimate that over 6 million Amazon Kindle Fire tablets will be sold in the fourth quarter of 2011.

Hardware

The Kindle Fire is equipped with a 1 GHz Texas Instruments OMAP 4430 dual-core processor. The display is a 7 inches (180 mm) multi-touch color screen with a 600×1024 pixel resolution. Connectivity is through 802.11n Wi-Fi and USB 2.0 (Micro-B connector). The device includes 8 GB of internal storage - said to be enough for 80 applications, plus either 10 movies or 800 songs or 6,000 books. According to Amazon's list of technical details, the Kindle Fire's 4400 mAh battery sustains up to 8 hours of consecutive reading and up to 7.5 hours of video playback with wireless off.

Software

The Kindle Fire is running a customized Android 2.3 Gingerbread OS. Besides access to Amazon Appstore, the Kindle Fire includes a cloud-accelerated "split browser" called Amazon Silk using Amazon EC2 for off-device cloud computation; including webpage layout and rendering, and Google's SPDY protocol for faster webpage content transmission. The user's Amazon digital content is given free storage in the Amazon Cloud's web-storage platform, and a built-in email application allows webmail (Gmail, Yahoo!, Hotmail, AOL Mail, etc.) to be merged into one inbox. The subscription-based Amazon Prime, which includes unlimited streaming of movies and TV shows, is available with a free trial period. The current version of the Kindle Fire OS as of November 29, 2011 is 6.2_User_3003020.

Content formats supported are Kindle Format 8 (KF8), Kindle Mobi (.azw), TXT, PDF, unprotected MOBI, PRC natively, Audible (Audible Enhanced (AA, AAX)), DOC, DOCX, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP, non-DRM AAC, MP3, MIDI, OGG, WAV, MP4, VP8.

Comparing e-Readers : Kindle Fire vs Nook Color vs iPad2

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What is Kindle : Amazon eBook Reader

2011-12-19T07:51:00.000-08:00

What is Kindle?

A Kindle is a digital reading device that was developed by the Internet merchandising website Amazon .com. Amazon .com also developed all of the proprietary software necessary for the use of the Kindle.

Description of a Kindle

The simplest way to describe a Kindle is as an ebook reader. However, there are many features to consider and understand about what a Kindle is and does:

The Kindle is a tool used for readers to buy and store digital books and magazines from the Internet so that they may be retrieved at a later date and read on the screen that the Kindle unit is equipped with.
Kindle units have their own storage capacities, which allow users to store digital libraries within the unit itself. This negates the need for external storage units for the storage of books or digital material.
The built-in storage on the Kindle means more than one book can be accessed and read without having to access the Internet or load a book’s file format into the unit.
Once the initial product download occurs, the user is able to access the file at any time he or she wishes.

Kindle Device

First Generation: Kindle

Amazon released the Kindle First Generation on November 19, 2007, for US$399. It sold out in five and a half hours.The device remained out of stock for five months until late April 2008.

It is the only Kindle with expandable memory, via an SD card slot.

The device features a 6 inch (diagonal) 4-level grayscale display, with 250 MB of internal memory, which can hold approximately 200 non-illustrated titles.

Amazon did not sell the Kindle First Generation outside the United States. Plans for a launch in the UK and other European countries were delayed by problems with signing up suitable wireless network operators.

Second Generation: Kindle 2

On February 10, 2009, Amazon announced the Kindle 2. It became available for purchase on February 23, 2009. The Kindle 2 features a text-to-speech option to read the text aloud, and 2 GB of internal memory of which 1.4 GB is user-accessible. By Amazon's estimates the Kindle 2 can hold about 1500 non-illustrated books. Unlike the Kindle First Generation, Kindle 2 does not have a slot for SD memory cards. It was slimmer than the original Kindle.

To promote the new Kindle, author Stephen King made UR, his then-new novella, available exclusively through the Kindle Store. On October 22, 2009, Amazon topped selling the original Kindle 2 in favor of the international version it had introduced earlier in the month.

According to an early review by iFixIt, the Kindle 2 features a Freescale 532 MHz, ARM-11 90 nm processor, 32 MB main memory, 2 GB moviNAND flash storage and a 3.7 V 1530 mAh lithium polymer battery.

On November 24, 2009, Amazon released a firmware update for the Kindle 2 that it said increased battery life by 85% and introduces native PDF support.

On July 8, 2009, Amazon reduced price of the Kindle 2 from the original $359 to $299. On October 7, 2009, Amazon urther reduced the price of the Kindle 2 to $259. The Kindle 2 was criticized for its high original retail price, compared to the $185.49 manufacturing cost estimated by iSuppli.

Kindle 2 : International Version

On October 7, 2009, Amazon announced an international version of the Kindle 2 with the ability to download new titles in over 100 countries. It became available October 19, 2009. The international Kindle 2 is physically very similar to the U.S.-only model, although it uses a different mobile network standard.

The original Kindle 2 used CDMA2000, for use on the Sprint network. The international version used standard GSM and 3G GSM, enabling it to be used on AT&T's U.S. mobile network and internationally in 100 other countries.

Kindle 2 International Version is believed to have a noticeably higher contrast screen, although Amazon does not advertise this. Another review done by Gadget lab, disputes this and actually states that the font appears to be fuzzier than the first generation Kindle. The review goes on to say that changes to the Kindle 2 have made it harder to read the smaller font sizes that most books use. On another website they also discuss how the font size is at times worse than the Kindle 1's. It appears that whether or not the Kindle 2 is clearer or fuzzier than the prior model depends on the font size. These issues became moot when Amazon sourced a higher contrast "E-ink" technology it dubbed "Pearl E-ink" and which it utilized on all of its e-reader devices thereafter.

On October 22, 2009, Amazon lowered the price on the international version from $279 to £259 and discontinued the U.S.-only model. On June 21, 2010, hours after Barnes & Noble lowered the price of its Nook, Amazon lowered the price of the Kindle 2 to $189.

Kindle DX

Amazon announced the Kindle DX on May 6, 2009. This device has a larger screen than the standard Kindle and supports simple PDF files. It was also the thinnest Kindle to date and offers an accelerometer, which enables the user to seamlessly rotate pages between landscape and portrait orientations when the Kindle DX is turned on its side. It is marketed as more suitable for displaying newspaper and textbook content. The device can only connect to Whispernet in the United States. It can be distinguished from the later International version by a serial number starting with "B004".

Kindle DX : International Version

Since January 19, 2010, the Kindle DX International has shipped in 100 countries. The Kindle DX comes with a 9.7-inch E Ink screen instead of the 6-inch basic Kindle screen. It has support for International 3G Wireless, and its serial number will start with "B005".

Kindle DX Graphite

On July 1, 2010, Amazon released a new revision of the Kindle DX "Graphite" (3rd Generation Kindle DX). As well as dropping the price from $489 to $379, the new Kindle DX has an E Ink display with 50% better contrast ratio (due to new E Ink Pearl technology) and comes only in a "graphite" case color. It is speculated the case color change is to improve contrast ratio perception further, as some users found the prior white casing highlighted that the E Ink background is light gray and not white. Like the prior Kindle DX, it does not have a Wi-Fi connection. Its serial numbers start with "B009". The DX Graphite (DXG) is generally accepted to be of the 3rd generation, yet it is a mix of 3rd generation hardware and 2nd generation software. The CPU is of the same speed as Kindle 3 but it is of a different revision. Even though DX Graphite has a larger case, it has only a half the system memory (128MB) of the Kindle 3 (256MB). Due to these hardware differences, DXG runs the same firmware as Kindle 2 (currently at version 2.5.8). Therefore, DXG cannot display international fonts (such as the Cyrillic font, Chinese, or any other non-Latin font), and PDF and the web browser are limited to Kindle 2 features.

Third Generation: Kindle Keyboard

The Kindle Keyboard is available in two versions. One of these, the Kindle Wi-Fi, is initially priced at US$139 / GB£111, and connects to the Internet exclusively via public or private Wi-Fi networks. The other version, considered a replacement to the Kindle 2, is priced at US$189 / GB£152 and includes both 3G and Wi-Fi connectivity. The built-in free 3G connectivity uses the same wireless signals that cell phones use, allowing it to have download and purchase capability from any location with cell service. The new Kindle with 3G is available in two colors: classic white and graphite. Both models use the new E ink "Pearl" display, which has a higher contrast than prior displays and a faster refresh rate. However, it remains slower than traditional LCDs.

The Kindle Keyboard utilizes a Freescale i. MX353 applications processor, Freescale MC13892 power management chip, Epson EINK controller and Samsung DRAM and Flash. Other hardware changes include a larger 1750 mAh lithium polymer battery, AnyDATA DTP-600W 3G GSM modem and Atheros AR6102G 802.11bg Wi-Fi chip.

The third-generation Kindle is 0.5 inches shorter and 0.5 inches narrower than the Kindle 2. It supports additional fonts and international Unicode characters. An experimental browser based on the popular WebKit rendering engine is included, as well as text-to-speech menu navigation. Internal memory is expanded to 4 GB, with approximately 3 GB available for user content. Battery life is advertised at up to two months of reading on a single charge with the wireless turned off.

Pre-orders for the new Kindle began at the same time as the announcement of the device, and Amazon began shipping the devices on August 27, 2010 in the United States and United Kingdom. With the announcement of the Kindle Keyboard, Amazon also launched an Amazon.co.uk version of the Kindle store. On August 25, 2010, Amazon announced that the Kindle 3 was the fastest-selling Kindle ever.

In late January 2011, Amazon announced that digital books were outselling their traditional print counterparts for the first time ever on its site, with an average of 115 Kindle editions being sold for every 100 paperback editions.

An ad-supported version, the " Kindle with Special Offers" was introduced on May 3, 2011, with a price reduction of $25 less at $114. On July 13, 2011, Amazon announced that due to a sponsorship agreement with AT&T, the price of the Kindle 3G with Special Offers would be lowered to $139, $50 less than the Kindle 3G. With the 2011 Kindle announcement, the price of the "Kindle Keyboard with Special Offers" was reduced to $99.

The Kindle Keyboard generally received good reviews after launch. In their Kindle Keyboard Review, Review Horizon, describes it as offering "the best reading experience in its class" while Engadget says "In the standalone category, the Kindle is probably the one to beat".

After the introduction of the low priced Kindle version, and Kindle Touch and Kindle Fire readers in September 2011 Amazon began describing the older Kindle version as the 'Kindle Keyboard' instead of the Kindle 3.

Fourth Generation : Kindle

Amazon announced the new lower-priced ($79 ad supported, $109 non-ad supported) version of the Kindle on September 28, 2011. This new version of the Kindle has five hard keys and a cursor pad but no keyboard; the device retains the 6 inch e-ink display of the previous Kindle model, in a slightly smaller and lighter form factor. The e-reader was initially made available in two sales versions, with the lower priced version displaying advertisements and other offers when in screensaver mode and on the home screen. The total flash storage is reduced to 2GB, and battery life to one month (from an estimated two months and 4GB for a Kindle Touch/Keyboard).

Kindle Touch

Amazon announced a touchscreen version of the Kindle on September 28, 2011; available with Wi-Fi ($99 ad-supported, $139 no ads) or Wi-Fi/3G connectivity ($149 ad-supported, $189 no ads). The device uses the same 6-inch E-ink screen of the previous Kindle model, with the addition of an infrared touch-screen control. Like its predecessor, the Kindle Touch has a capacity of 4 gigabytes and battery life estimated at two months. The Kindle Touch began to ship on November 15, 2011.

Kindle Fire

Amazon announced an Android-based tablet with a color touch screen on September 28, 2011. It costs $199 and has a 7-inch IPS display. This is the first Kindle without an E Ink display. Unlike previously released Kindles, it has no 3G option. The Kindle Fire also has a light sensor but lacks a microphone, camera, and SD slot which some tablets do have. It has 8GB of storage and a projected battery life of less than eight hours.

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