Amazon Kindle Fire Preview
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The Kindle Fire was announced by Amazon on 28th September 2011. It is was immediately launched in the USA but, we are still awaiting availability and pricing details here in the UK.
The most remarkable thing about the Kindle Fire is its price. It looks like the Kindle Fire is being sold at a loss. This is common practice though and the Sony PS3, Xbox 360, Apple iPad and many other devices are sold at a loss, being subsidised by content sales.
So, is it an iPad killer? The simple answer is 'No, not really'. The two devices are aimed at very different markets and deliver the user experience in very different ways. The Kindle Fire basically splits the market in two though. We can see the lower end of the market being dominated by Amazon, leaving the higher end to Apple. For the time being anyway.
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The Kindle Fire is less of a stand-alone, ready-to-use tablet and more of a thin-client tablet for Amazon's content and cloud services. The price makes it a very compelling proposition but, it is one that is inextricably linked to Amazon, its services and its content. All syncing is invisible, wireless and in the background. The viewing of content is seamless, meaning that if you are watching a movie on the train through Amazon's cloud, it will pick it where you left it, when you arrive home and turn on the TV.
Amazon Prime
Part of this link-up is a 30-day free subscription to Amazon Prime with each Kindle Fire. This means millions of new users will immediately have access to part of the company's Prime Instant Videos service. Note that this is a USA only offer at the moment and there is no clear indication that this will be replicated for UK users. To most users, Amazon Prime is a subscription service that provides free shipping on all your Amazon orders. We are regularly spammed to sign up for it with every order placed on the Amazon website.
It is doubtful that many of those users will continue to subscribe to the £49 a year Amazon Prime service after the free trial ends. Who knows how many Kindle Fire users are already subscribers? The inclusion of a free video service on the tablet has the potential to be very significant in the streaming video world though. It is very based on content consumption on the device though, as it has no ports to connect it to a bigger screen.
Many of those who subscribe to Amazon Prime are probably not even aware that in addition to free shipping they also get free access to more than 5,000 eligible films and TV titles.
Hardware Specification
Case
The Kindle Fire has a case and layout very similar to the Blackberry Playbook and the reason behind this is that they were made by the same company. The back is rubberised. The device itself is 190 mm × 120 mm × 11.4 mm (7.5" × 4.7" × 0.45") and weighs 413g (14.6 ounces). The case only has a 3.5 mm stereo audio jack, top-mounted stereo speakers and a USB 2.0 port (micro-B connector) for charging.
Screen
The biggest change that comes with the Kindle Fire is the move from an e-ink display to 7", 1024 × 600 pixels, 16-million colour display. Like the iPad, it uses an In-Plane Switching (IPS) display, which means it has a wide viewing angle and great colour saturation. The resolution 169 pixels per inch. It's not comparable to the 326 pixels per inch of the small iPhone 4 display but, it is better than the iPad 2 (132 pixels per inch). The screen is also protected by Gorilla glass.
Whilst this is an improvement to many, the departure from the e-ink display makes the Kindle Fire a much less desirable eBook reader. These types of screens are simply not good enough to read books outside with.
Processor & Memory
Whilst the Kindle Fire only has 8Gb of memory, the numbers are not directly comparable with traditional tablets. The memory can be thought of as more like a cache content storage area. Even so, it might be limiting to some and this probably equates to about 20 typical movies on the device at any one time, assuming you haven't filled it up with music. And how much of that 8GB is left over for the user content after the operating system and apps have taken their slice?
Battery
The sales content states:
"Up to 8 hours of continuous reading or 7.5 hours of video playback, with wireless off. Battery life will vary based on wireless usage, such as web browsing and downloading content."
For something that is very dependent on Internet and cloud connections, it seems very misleading to quote battery life figures that are dependent on the Wi-Fi being turned off! Time will tell.
Connectivity & Ports
The Kindle Fire has Wi-Fi only (802.11b, 802.11g, 802.11n, or 802.1X standard with support for WEP, WPA and WPA2 security using password authentication) and there is no 3G version planned. This probably makes sense for a device that is so heavily dependent on the cloud. This does limit its usefulness when you are away from home though. It's going to be difficult to use it when sat on a beach for example, unless you have cached content (and out of the sunlight).
There are no slots for memory cards and no video out connector! This is perhaps one of the biggest omissions.
Operating System
Although the Kindle Fire runs an operating system based on Android, it is not going to be an Android tablet to most users. Amazon 'forked' the OS and the version on the Kindle Fire (based on V2.3) no longer has any linkages or connections to Google. It also has none of the Google apps. This could be considered a smart move by Amazon, as fewer people will see it as yet another Android tablet. Most will see it as a Kindle+ device. The Kindle brand is as strong as Android and has a very loyal user base, much more so than the average Android user.
Apps & Content
The Kindle Fire uses a variation of Android 2.3, with its own (mostly) unique interface. Apps for the device will come from the Amazon apps store but, Amazon currently stocks a fraction of the total number of Android apps available in the Android Market, just 10,000 of the 200,000 available. Amazon have also provided mixed answers regarding compatibility between the Kindle Fire and wider Android eco-system. Apps that use features that aren't on the tablet (such as a camera) will not work. It is quite likely that Amazon will verify apps before making them available.
You can sideload content of your own, but you will have to find apps to play this content. The video player is solely for Amazon purchased or streamed content. The tablet has a USB port and mass storage mode, so you can also sideload Android APK program files, even without rooting it. Amazon also isn't doing anything special to prevent people from rooting the device either.
Amazon have recently announced that the Kindle Fire will have a native email client and will also support Office docs.
What Else Is Missing?
The Kindle Fire is missing a lot, when compared to a device like the iPad. Firstly there is no 3G connectivity but this might come in the next version. For a lot of people this isn't an issue but it makes many of the apps useless when on a beach or mountain, with no Internet connectivity, or even in a car. Think iPod Touch and then you might realise the impact this will have for you.
There is no GPS and so no accurate location based services or content. No accelerometers, sensors, no camera or microphone so its definitely not a communications capable device (IM and email aside). Note: there is no email client at launch.
User Experience
Amazon has put a lot of care in the user experience. When you first open your Kindle Fire, it greets you by your name, having been personalised at the factory. It is ready to use with no setup, there is no connecting to a PC and no iTunes equivalent :-)
The interface is very simple. There is no techy UI, more normally associated with Android tablets and no new UI to learn with each major operating system update either. There is simply a screen to flip through your content (books, movies, music and apps) and an icon tray for your favourites.
Silk Web Browser
With the Kindle Fire, Amazon introduced a new web browser called Silk. It uses some of Amazon's cloud service to improve the mobile browsing experience. Firstly it is optimised for the Kindle Fire hardware, with an emphasis on taking the processing load off of the Kindle Fire device and using Amazon's EC2 cloud to handle some of the processing load. Silk is referred to as a 'split browser'. It knows what web page processing works well on the the tablet and lets the heavier processing (HTML, CSS, Javascript, etc.) be performed on Amazon's cloud servers. This simply speeds up page load and display times.
Loading a web page often requires multiple connections to several servers. The cloud services pre-process websites and optimises them, minimising the the amount of storage used and the and processing load on the Kindle Fire. This in turn reduces the bandwidth required. Silk will also cache sites you've visited on the EC2 servers. Silk learns your browsing behaviour and can even pre-load the pages you visit the most when Internet connected.
This processing comes at a cost though. Amazon get to see everything you access and all the content to from your Kindle Fire, even being able to inject new content into the web pages. This raises privacy concerns and comparisons have been made with Phorm and they have been quite a few privacy organisations complaining about Silk. "We generally do not keep this information for longer than 30 days" the Amazon Silk terms and conditions say.
Summary
The Kindle Fire is very complimentary to a Smartphone in our view. The Smartphone excels at communications and apps but, the small screen can be restrictive when consuming content, especially video. The Kindle Fire's 7" form factor makes it a lot more portable than the iPad 2 but, the lack of 3G really restricts it as a truly portable tablet media device. If viewed as a media consumption device with intelligent caching of content, then this is less of an issue though. With a little planning, the lack of 3G could not be an issue.
It could make a great family device and the shared usage will also mean Amazon have a slightly confused (aggregated) view my browser habits, though we are definitely not saying this really protects your privacy. The lack of ports (particularly HDMI out) makes it very difficult to share the media experience though and with no way to display the Amazon content on your TV, it is disappointing.
We are really undecided at this point in time. The low price (yet to be confirmed) is very compelling but, the Kindle Fire has so many limitations, both on the hardware and with the content purchasing and consumption. The privacy issues are a stumbling point too. We bought an iPad 2 and sold it on because it didn't really fulfil a need. The Kindle Fire might be very cheap but, it still doesn't compiment a decent Smartphone in our view.
We are prepared to pay a decent price for a decent tablet with 7" screen but, we are looking for one that has full 1080p widescreen capability and HDMI out. As an eBook reader, the new Kindle Touch is a much better proposition. We are going to pass on the Kindle Fire.
