Kindle Fire 2 to Come with Nokia Maps, Hinting at a Built-in GPS

With the second-generation Kindle Fire less than a week from being unveiled, it's understandable that leaks are starting to crop up. Actually, Amazon is looking like a sieve at the moment.

There have been several leaks about the Kindle Fire, including photos, a leak about the Kindle "paperwhite" with built-in screen light, and now another leak about Nokia being the chosen map provider for the upcoming Fire.

If we didn't know better, we'd say Amazon was leaking all of this on purpose to build up hype. But that would be silly, what company would ever do that?

So, yes, Nokia Maps is going to be the built-in map solution for the Kindle Fire. Nokia is set to power the Windows Phone app as well.

The big news, actually, isn't that Nokia is the map provider, it's that the Kindle Fire will have a map app.

And that’s because the first generation didn't have one and for good reason. One, it didn't have GPS, to save money, so a map app would be pretty useless.

Two, the tablet was pushed as a media consumption device, more useful on the couch than in the streets. Three, Amazon couldn't use Google Maps and using anything else would have meant more money and more time, none of which Amazon was in possession of.

In the end, it didn't really matter, people were willing to go without a map app as long as they got a tablet for $200. That won't stick this time around since they can already get a tablet with $200, €160, one that has a GPS, Google Maps, a front-facing camera, a mic and so on, the Nexus 7.

Amazon won't get away with just putting out a media consumption device, slapping a $200 price tag on it and calling it a day.

So the new Kindle Fire will have a GPS, at the very least WiFi triangulation, and it's very likely that it will have a camera as well, making it a much more rounded-out tablet.