Amazon Introduces New Kindle Tablets

Amazon today announced its next-generation Kindle Fire tablets – the Kindle Fire HDX 7 and Kindle Fire HDX 8.9. The tablets were introduced by Jeff Bezos himself in a special but discrete event in its headquarters in Seattle, Washington. Both the 7-inch and 8.9-inch models sport Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 800 chip with a 2.2GHz quad-core processor, 2GB of RAM and Adreno 330 GPU.

 

Amazon today announced its next-generation Kindle Fire tablets – the Kindle Fire HDX 7 and Kindle Fire HDX 8.9.

The tablets were introduced by Jeff Bezos himself in a special but discrete event in its headquarters in Seattle, Washington. Both the 7-inch and 8.9-inch models sport Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 800 chip with a 2.2GHz quad-core processor, 2GB of RAM and Adreno 330 GPU.

The two tablets are also equipped with high resolution displays with the Fire HDX 8.9-inch sporting a 2560×1600 pixel display with 339 pixels per inch while the HDX 7-inch packs a 1920 x 1200 pixel screen with a screen density of 323ppi.

In the looks department, the new Kindle Fire tablets now sport angular lines in contrast to the curvy body of its predecessor. The devices’ speakers have been moved to the top and the power button as well as the volume rocker has been moved slightly to the back for better ergonomics.

The device lacks an HDMI or MHL port but can still stream content to compatible devices via the cloud and act as a second screen that can display supplementary information to the content being displayed on a TV. The 7-inch model packs a front-facing camera while the 8.9-inch model comes with an 8MP snapper at the back as well as a front-facing camera, which are both capable of capturing 1080p videos.

But out of all the new features of these tablets, it’s probably the “Mayday” button that would spark a lot of interest to consumers. Tapping on this soft button connects a user to Amazon’s army of tech support representatives that are available 24-7, 365-days-a-year to help you with your technical concerns or act as a concierge or information help desk. Amazon is also adding VPN support and Mobile Device Management through third-party providers as part of the company’s expanded enterprise support.

The tablets will run on a heavily modified version of Android Jelly Bean, which the company calls Fire OS 3.0 (codenamed Mojito).Both models are now available for pre-order on Amazon’s website for $229 and $329 for the 7-inch and 8.9-inch respectively. The 7-inch model will start shipping on October 18th while the 8.9-inch version is set to ship starting November 7th.