14 DAY TRIAL // Introduced just a few days ago, Amazon's Kindle Fire 7-inch tablet could soon get a bigger brother as a recently uncovered report suggest the company has apparently contracted Foxconn for building them a larger 10.1-inch slate.
Production of this new tablet is expected to kick off by the end of this year, according to industry sources cited by DigiTimes.
The same sources also claim that Foxconn is expected to start shipping these devices before year-end 2011 for “holiday-season demand,” which seems to suggest that the tablets will be released before Christmas.
Although a pre-Christmas launch would most certainly make some sense, is highly unlikely that Amazon will take such a route since the Kindle Fire won't actually start shipping until November 15.
DigiTime's sources haven't provided any information regarding the configuration of this upcoming tablet, but some previous rumors suggested Amazon is considering using the Nvidia Kal-El SoC for the 10.1-incher.
This chip should be able to provide a noticeable increase in speed when compared with the dual-core 1GHz TI OMAP 4430 processor used for the 7-inch Kindle Fire.
No matter the hardware configuration Amazon will select for the alleged 10.1-inch table, the outfit is expected to use the same highly customized operating system based on Android, which is also installed in the Kindle Fire.
In this new UI, multitasking apps can be accessed and controlled from a drop-down menu found at the top of the screen, while web pages are viewed using a the Amazon Silk browser which has been optimized to decrease page loading times and provide a much smoother surfing experience.
Users will most probably still get access to the Android Appstore and Kindle books service, as well as to Amazon's Cloud Storage service, which is also provided for the Kindle Fire.