14 DAY TRIAL // Amazon's Fire tablet has been expected with great interest by many in the industry, and now the company has finally come forward and introduced this 7-inch slate during a press event held in New York, near the Javits Convention Center.
The Fire was introduced by none other than the company's chief executive officer Jeff Bezos, and the biggest surprise is the price, since the tablet is priced not at $250 to $300 as everybody thought, but at $199 (about 146 Euros).
"We're delivering premium products at non-premium prices," Mr. Bezos sayd when it referred to the price of the Fire.
To put things in perspective, Apple's iPad 2 starts at $499 (366 Euro), making the Fire significantly less expensive than its iOS rival.
Specifications are still scarce as the event is taking place as we speak, but we do known that the fire is actually based on Android, although its interface most certainly doesn't resemble anything we have seen until now.
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 the Amazon Silk browser which has been optimized for raw speed.
Hardware wise, the Fire has a 7-inch IPS screen with an yet unknown resolution, Gorilla Glass coating, a dual-core processor, and all of these are fitted inside a chassis that weighs 14.6 ounces (roughly 413 grams).
Connectivity options include only Wi-Fi, but Amazon makes up for this by enabling its customers to access a wide variety of content through the Android Appstore and Kindle books service, all stored for free via the company's Cloud Storage.
The Amazon Fire 7-inch tablet will start shipping on November 15, but customers will soon be able to pre-order it from the company's Website. (via NYTimes)