Amazon caused a significant sensation in the summer of 2011 once they announced the planned release of a new 7 inch tablet by having an 8 hour battery life that would run on a really customized version of Android and cost under $200. Once the final specifications were revealed the interest reached fever pitch because it was very similar to the ipad 2 having a 1 GHz dual-core processor and 512 MB RAM. However, closer inspection and use from the Kindle Fire implies that not even close to being an ipad 2 killer, the Amazon kindle fire fulfills a very different role.
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The first thing you may notice when reading through the Kindle Fire specs may be the absence of lots of hardware that is common place even on smartphones. You won’t find a camera, microphone, compass, GPS or a 3G chip what exactly you can do using the Amazon kindle fire is sort of restricted. Amazon has even cut off accessibility Android Marketplace to help you only download approved apps in the Kindle Store - but before you balk at the idea, the Kindle Store has 16,000 apps available to download including all the most popular tools, utilities, office apps and games that you’ll find around the Android Marketplace.
What Amazon has done is create a desirable handheld tablet that leverages its vast media library being the ultimate consumption device. The Kindle Fire is not designed to be a creative tablet like the Samsung Galaxy or even the Apple ipad 2, it’s designed to do something which would be to make it as easy as possible to access Amazon’s database of movies, TV shows, ebooks, apps and music. To this end, Amazon even sells the Fire baffled because it knows it will make up the cost in the long run - which matches a way towards explaining the incredible price.
Therefore the Kindle Fire is really a media consumption device then, what does that mean? To begin with, with Amazon Prime (you get a free month subscription when you buy the device) you get unrestricted, unlimited access to over 100,000 movies and TV shows. You can view them without notice, as often as you would like. With your WiFi connection the fireplace will stream this content directly to your device.
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Additionally, you will obtain access to Amazon’s Cloud Storage. What this means is that you can upload all of the media content that you simply already own like MP3’s, movies and ebooks after which can get on from anywhere using your Amazon kindle fire (assuming there's a Wi Fi connection!). You don’t need to lug around another hard drive anymore because things are stored and is accessible from the Internet.
Even though the Amazon kindle fire is designed as a consumption device that doesn’t mean you can’t use it for some productivity purposes, for example it is simple to use it to handle your emails, you can view reports, spreadsheets and presentations using one of the many office apps that are offered and you will use it to improve your online calendar.
The Android interface continues to be completely overhauled by Amazon and it looks pretty slick, although when compared to finesse from the ipad 2 interface the Amazon kindle fire isn’t quite there yet. It’s quite zippy to navigate around, but again, if you are accustomed to the ipad 2 you will notice a small difference.
Just $200 for such a powerful device that provides you access to so much content the Amazon kindle fire will probably be among the must have tablets for 2012.