On September 28th, Amazon unveiled the next big competitor in the tablet space, the Kindle Fire. Rumors have been swirling since the beginning of the time itself that the company would launch a 7-inch, Android-powered slate that ties into its uber-popular Prime services and vast ebook collection... and lo and behold, Jeff Bezos unveiled just that, due for release in November 15th for $199. Stay tuned right here for everything you need to know — and even more!
Amazon Kindle Fire: price, release date, video hands-on, and more
10.1-inch Kindle Fire coming in place of 8.9-inch model, says DigiTimes
DigiTimes is reporting that Amazon is planning to release both a 7-inch successor to the Kindle Fire and a 10.1-inch variant later this year, going back on previous reports of an 8.9-inch model. Both models are said to be scheduled for the second half of 2012, and represent a shift away from traditional e-readers — DigiTimes' sources claim the company has reduced its orders from E Ink, which reported a 62% drop in year-on-year revenue last month. Of course, with the site seemingly disowning...
Kindle Fire Hotmail app now available
There's still no sign of a Gmail app for the Kindle Fire, so here's your consolation prize — Microsoft has released a free Hotmail app to the Amazon Appstore. While a Hotmail app for Android is nothing new, with over 3 million users, Microsoft says it's tweaked the app for a smooth Fire experience. It's also claiming advantages over the native POP3 email client, with Exchange Active Sync grabbing contacts and folders with your mail. The move makes sense — the Kindle Fire's native mail...
Kindle Fire remains Amazon's best-selling item, million Kindle per week sales continue
Amazon just announced that it sold more than a million Kindle devices per week throughout December — that includes the Kindle, Kindle Touch, and Kindle Fire tablet. As usual for Amazon, no specific numbers were given, but the company says the Fire remains its best-selling and most-wished-for item, marking some 13 weeks that the Android-powered seven-inch tablet has held the top spot. The other Kindles didn't do so badly either: the Kindle Touch and basic Kindle were the second and third...
Kindle Fire 6.2.1 update rolling out now, improves Silk browser and adds homescreen customization (update)
Well, what do you know, there's another update for the Kindle Fire. Users are reporting that they're getting the 6.2.1 update now, and, as Amazon promised two weeks ago, it improves Silk browser performance and lets users customize which items go on the front page carousel — but (unsurprisingly) kills root access as well. There also appears to be a new setting, which, when turned on, requires that the user enter a password to enable Wi-Fi, hopefully keeping kids with itchy One-Click...
Kindle Fire generating 'hundreds of millions' of monthly ad impressions, says Millennial Media
It would seem that the Kindle Fire is doing well: Amazon says it's selling more than a million total Kindle devices a week, and the Fire sits atop its best seller lists. Mobile ad platform Millennial Media has offered up some more specific numbers, however: it's found that the Kindle Fire is racking up "hundreds of millions" of monthly user ad impressions. The company says that the growth of impressions on the Fire has been growing by 19 percent daily — faster than the first iPad when it...
Amazon's HTML5-based Kindle Format 8 explained, already in use on Kindle Fire?
Blogger Nate Hoffelder has claimed that Amazon's replacement to the Mobi 7 ebook format, the HTML5-powered Kindle Format 8 (KF8), may already be used in Kindle Fire-exclusive graphic novels and magazines. The blogger cites an unnamed source, and says that a beta version of the new format is being tested by a select group of publishers. Apparently he's got a copy of the beta and some supporting guidelines, and after working with the software to convert an ePub to KF8, he said he's a "little...
CyanogenMod 7 for Kindle Fire ready to download
Having teased us last week with photos of CyanogenMod 7 running on the Kindle Fire, xda-developers user JackpotClavin has now released the ROM along with a customised version of ClockWorkMod (that doesn't need volume buttons to navigate) and installation instructions. It's still very much an alpha build, with no sound or hardware acceleration, however most other aspects of the tablet including Wi-Fi and the touchscreen are supported. Users are finding ways around other issues including...
CyanogenMod 7 booted on the Kindle Fire
Amazon's Kindle Fire was rooted on the 16th of this month, which two weeks later has led to the inevitable CyanogenMod ROM. JackpotClavin over on the xda forums has a couple of images proving that CM7 works on the Fire, though it's still very early days. Wi-Fi is operational, but the tablet's touchscreen controller is interpreting input incorrectly, which is rather slowing down testing on what else might or might not work. You can keep track of this ROM's progress at the source link below,...
Amazon: Kindle Fire best selling product for eight weeks running, quadruples Black Friday sales
Amazon's not talking specifics, but the company just issued a breathless press release calling Black Friday the "best ever for the Kindle family" while noting that the Kindle Fire has remained the "bestselling product across all of Amazon since its introduction 8 weeks ago," on September 28th.
Amazon, a company that never talks about exact Kindle sales figures, says that it sold "millions" of the new Kindle family even before Black Friday. And this past Friday, Amazon says it sold four times...
Kindle Fire rooted and splayed, source code released
The Kindle Fire — it's just a BlackBerry PlayBook with a big Kindle logo imprinted on its back, right? To help you answer that burning question, iFixit has taken Amazon's brand new Android tablet into the lab and subjected it to the usual teardown treatment. The first major difference between the Fire and the PlayBook is in the port selection: Amazon offers just a 3.5mm headphone jack and a MicroUSB port that doubles up as both a data connector and power intake. There's also a power...
Hulu Plus and ESPN Scorecenter confirmed for Kindle Fire
We'd already heard that the Kindle Fire will be getting apps from Netflix and Facebook at launch — along with "several thousand more" — and in an email earlier today Amazon revealed that Hulu Plus and ESPN Scorecenter would be included in that number. We're sure you've heard of Hulu Plus by now: the app offers catch-up TV for most of the major US networks, for a subscription of $7.99 per month. ESPN Scorecenter gives you access to all the goals and highlights from a huge range of...
Amazon Appstore gets updated to version 2.0, adds subscription support
The Amazon Appstore for Android got an update to version 2.0 this morning, presumably in preparation for the upcoming release of the Kindle Fire. Probably the most significant change is the addition of a subscriptions item in the main app menu, which will likely be used to access your Newsstand content. Along with some cosmetic changes to match the look and feel of the Kindle Fire's UI, a new settings menu lets you turn on pin protection for in-app purchasing — which is enabled by default...
8.9-inch Kindle Fire coming next, not 10.1?
The first Kindle Fire isn't even out yet, but activity seems to already be under way to prepare for the manufacture of the next one. DigiTimes reports that LG Display and Chungwa Picture Tubes have begun preparing production capacities for 8.9-inch displays, which are expected to make their way into Amazon's second Kindle Fire tablet. It identifies LGD and CPT as the suppliers of the 7-inch screen inside the upcoming Kindle Fire 1.0, making them pretty good candidates to provide the hardware...
Kindle Fire: Amazon making millions more than planned
It looks like Jeff Bezos's expectation that Amazon would sell out of the "many millions" of Kindle Fires it was planning to make wasn't far from the truth. During the company's third quarter earnings call, Bezos mentioned that based on pre-orders, Amazon was "increasing capacity and building millions more than we'd already planned." Exactly how many millions total is it manufacturing? Bezos doesn't say, but we'll take him at his word that Amazon is making a lot of Kindle Fires. The...
How Amazon picked Android’s lock
Legal challenges and royalties aside, Google's official stance on Android has long been that it's open and free. And yes, by some definitions of the words "open" and "free," that's true. Anyone - any individual or company - can simply point their browser to the Android Open Source Project, download the source code, and use it however they please. They're very upfront about it: "Here you can find the information and source code you need to build an Android-compatible device," AOSP's home page...
Editorial: The Kindle Fire, the iPad, and what tablets are good for
It wasn't overly explicit, but Jeff Bezos took a pretty big shot at Apple and the iPad this morning while introducing the new Kindle Fire: he flashed a photo of Apple's white USB cable, called syncing and backup a "broken model," and went on to emphasize the Fire's Whispersync cloud storage capabilities. The line and photo drew a big laugh, but it also underlined a subtle message within Bezos' whole presentation: the Kindle Fire is going to be the first hugely successful competitor to the...
Amazon Kindle Fire vs. iPad 2 vs. Nook Color: by the numbers
Clearly, Amazon's just-announced Kindle Fire isn't designed to compete head-to-head with the iPad 2 on specs alone, but that doesn't mean consumers won't be cross-shopping the two this holiday season -- and that means a comparison is in order. Of course, Barnes & Noble's Nook Color is a more direct competitor, so we're throwing that in as well. Amazon's value proposition for the Fire comes from its vast, deep ecosystem and a highly-customized build of Android that CEO Jeff Bezos suggests will...
Amazon Kindle Fire: pictures, video, and hands-on
It's been a morning of Amazon surprises, but amongst all the news of cheaper and Touch Kindles, there's no doubt that the brand new Kindle Fire has us the most intrigued. Unfortunately, Amazon is being quite strict about actually letting us touch the 7-inch tablet and that glorious IPS display, but hit the break for some live shots, video, and our early thoughts from watching the demos.
Hardware
Just like the early leaks predicted, the Fire does in fact look a lot like the BlackBerry...
Kindle Fire Newsstand announced, featuring Conde Nast magazines, DC Comics
In addition to all of the digital content we associate with Amazon, including video, audio, and Kindle e-books, the company has announced that the Kindle Fire Newsstand will stock "100 exclusive graphic novels" from DC Entertainment. Titles include Watchmen, Batman: Arkham City, Superman: Earth One, and Green Lantern: Secret Origin. If comics aren’t your style, you can look forward to seeing "hundreds of magazines and newspapers" available in Fire-optimized form, including The Wall Street...
Amazon Kindle Fire price and specs revealed: 7-inch IPS display, dual-core processor, $199
The $199 Amazon Kindle Fire has gotten its announcement a little early, and not from Amazon at all. Bloomberg, citing Amazon executives, reports that the Kindle Fire is a 7-inch tablet running Android and functioning as a "souped-up version of the Kindle." To reach that keen price, Amazon has eschewed the integration of a camera, microphone or 3G, though the Fire will come with W-iFi and a free 30-day trial of Amazon Prime. Prime membership typically costs $79 per year and grants the benefits...
Amazon's Kindle Fire UI: it's Android, but not quite
Amazon's new 7-inch, $199 Kindle Fire tablet technically runs on Android, but it's not the user experience you might expect -- rather than the typical array of user-configurable homescreens, the main interface is a handsome rotating bookshelf where you store your virtual books, magazines, CDs and apps all together. By default, your most recently accessed items will appear on top, though you can also pin items to a "favorites shelf." There are also an array of distinct tabs labeled...
Amazon introduces Silk: a cloud-based browser
In addition to heavily skinning Android, Amazon is rolling its own web browser for its new Kindle Fire tablet. They’re calling Silk a "split" browser, with half of the work being done by the Amazon EC2 (Elastic Computing Cloud). The idea of a middleman compressing and simplifying websites before they’re sent to a mobile device isn’t new, but Amazon’s approach seems much more advanced, with all the sub-systems of the browser available on both sides, and work being split "dynamically"...
Amazon's tablet to be called the Kindle Fire?
Amazon is widely expected to unveil a tablet at the event its holding on September 28th, and plenty of alleged details of the device have already leaked out. Today, MG Siegler at TechCrunch is reporting that the name of this tablet is going to be the Kindle Fire.
The device will supposedly be a 7-inch, backlit LCD Android tablet, and will be available in the second week of November. The design of the device will reportedly be similar to RIM's PlayBook, with an entirely custom version of...
Amazon holding press conference on September 28th, tablet coming?
Well, would you look at what just hit our inbox! Yep, Amazon's holding a press conference on Wednesday, September 28th right here in NYC. Sadly, the invite is as bare bones as they come, but all signs point to this being the tablet launch since rumors pegged it for around early October. Of course, it could just be a new Kindle - perhaps with a touchscreen - but we've got a strong feeling Jeff Bezos is going to talk about more than just reading. Either way, we've only got a few days to wait -...
Amazon registers more Kindle domain names, could hint at tablet(s) to come?
Amazon might have hinted at future additions to its Kindle line through a string of recent domain name registrations. You may recall that the Wall Street Journal confirmed an Amazon tablet and touchscreen Kindle back in July, but new URL acquisitions could reveal possible names for upcoming offerings. The addresses in question are KindleEarth.com and KindleWater.com, though Amazon has also taken ownership of KindleAir.com, KindleWave.com, and KindleScribe.com in the past few months, as F...
