Kindle Fire
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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| Developer | Amazon.com, Inc. |
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| Manufacturer | Quanta Computer[1] |
| Generation | 1st |
| Release date | November 15, 2011 (USA) September 6, 2012 (Europe) December 18, 2012 (Japan) |
| Units sold | 7 million (as of October 2012)[2] |
| Operating system | Based on Android OS 2.3.3 (customized: 6.3.2_user_4110520) (1st gen.) Based on Android 4.0.3 (customized: 10.3.1_user_3130720) (2nd gen.) |
| System-on-chip used | Texas Instruments OMAP 4 4430 |
| CPU | 1.2 GHz Dual-core Cortex-A9 (ARMv7) |
| Memory | 512 MB RAM (1st gen.) 1 GB RAM (2nd gen.)[3] |
| Storage | 8 GB[4] |
| Display | 7 inch multi-touch Gorilla Glass display, 1024×600 at 169 ppi, 16 million colors.[4] Capacitive touch sensitive.[5] |
| Connectivity | Micro-USB 2.0 (type B)[6] 3.5 mm stereo socket[6] 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi |
| Online services | Amazon Prime, Amazon Cloud Storage, Amazon Cloud Player, Amazon Instant video, Amazon Silk, Amazon App Store, Amazon Kindle Store |
| Dimensions | 190 mm (7.5 in) H 120 mm (4.7 in) W 11.4 mm (0.45 in) D |
| Weight | 413 g (14.6 oz)[7] |
| Successor | Kindle Fire HD |
| Website | Amazon Kindle Fire |
The Kindle Fire's external dimensions are 7.5 × 4.7 × 0.45 inches (191 × 119 × 11 mm).[10] The visible area of the screen is 6 × 3.5 inches (152 × 89 mm). The Kindle Fire originally retailed for US$199.[11] Estimates of the device's initial bill of materials ranged from $150 to $201.70.[12][13] Amazon's business strategy is to make money through sales of digital content on the Fire, rather than through the device itself.[14][15][16]
On September 6, 2012, the Kindle Fire was upgrade to the second generation, and its price was reduced to $159, RAM upgraded to 1 GB and processor clock speed upgraded to 1.2 GHz. A more powerful and video-friendly version, the Kindle Fire HD (7 and 8.9 inch versions) were also made available, initially priced at $199 and $299.[17][18]
On September 25, 2013, the new Kindle Fire HD (7 inch), priced at $139, and the Kindle Fire HDX were introduced. The Kindle Fire HDX has a new graphics engine, double the memory, and triple the processor speed of the previous model. The 7-inch and 8.99-inch versions were introduced at $229 and $379 respectively.[19][20]
As of May 2013, the Kindle Fire is the #2 best selling tablet after Apple's iPad, with about 7 million units sold according to estimates by Forrester Research.[2]
Contents
Design
Hardware
Most Kindle Fire devices employ a 1-GHz Texas Instruments OMAP 4430 dual-core processor. The device has a multi-touch color screen with a diagonal length of 7 inches (180 mm) and a 600×1024-pixel resolution (160 dpi density). Connectivity is through 802.11n Wi-Fi and USB 2.0 (Micro-B connector). The device includes 8 GB of internal storage—said to be enough for 80 applications, plus either 10 movies or 800 songs or 6,000 books.[21][22] According to Amazon's list of technical details, the Kindle Fire's 4400 mAh battery sustains up to 8 hours of consecutive reading and up to 7.5 hours of video playback with wireless off.[23]Of the 8 GB internal storage, approximately 6.5 GB is available for content.[24]
The first-generation Kindle Fire has a sensor on the upper left-hand corner of the screen. This is widely considered to be an ambient-light sensor, disabled since an early software upgrade.[25]
Software
The first generation of Kindle Fire devices run a customized Android 2.3.3 Gingerbread OS.[26] The second generation Kindle Fire HD runs a customized Android 4.0.3 Ice Cream Sandwich OS.[27] Along with access to Amazon Appstore,[6][28] the Fire includes a cloud-accelerated "split browser", Amazon Silk, using Amazon EC2 for off-device cloud computation; including webpage layout and rendering, and Google's SPDY protocol for faster webpage content transmission.[29][30][31] The user's Amazon digital content is given free storage in Amazon Cloud's web-storage platform,[6] 5 GB music storage in Amazon Cloud Drive, and a built-in email application allows webmail (Gmail, Yahoo!, Hotmail, AOL Mail, etc.) to be merged into one inbox.[6] The subscription-based Amazon Prime, which includes unlimited streaming of movies and TV shows, is available with a free 30 day trial period.[6]Content formats supported are Kindle Format 8 (KF8), Kindle Mobi (.azw), TXT, PDF, unrestricted MOBI, PRC natively, Audible (Audible Enhanced (AA, AAX)), DOC, DOCX, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP, non-DRM AAC, MP3, MIDI, OGG, WAV, MP4, VP8.[6]
Because of Amazon's USB driver implementation, the Kindle Fire suffers from slow USB transfer speeds. For example, transferring an 800MB video file may take more than three minutes.[32]
Reception
Analysts had projected the device to be a strong competitor to Apple's iPad,[11][33] and that other Android device makers would suffer lost sales.[34][35]In a review published by Project Gutenberg, the Kindle Fire was called a "huge step back in freedom from the Kindle 3"; the reviewer noted that Amazon introduced a "deliberate limitation" into the Fire that didn't exist in the previous version: it is no longer possible to download free e-books from websites such as Project Gutenberg, Internet Archive and Google Books and have them stored permanently in the same places where books from Amazon are kept.[36]
Sales
Customers began receiving their Kindle Fires on November 15, 2011, and by the following December, customers had purchased over a million Kindle devices per week.[37] International Data Corporation (IDC) estimated that the Kindle Fire sold about 4.7 million units during the fourth quarter of 2011.[38]Recently, the Amazon Kindle Fire helped the company beat their 2012 first quarter estimates and boosted the company's stock in extended trading.[39] As of May 2013, about 7 million units have been sold according to estimates.[2]
Models
| Generation | 1st generation (2011) | 2nd generation (2012) |
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| Model | Kindle Fire | Kindle Fire |
| Release date | November 15, 2011 | September 14, 2012 |
| Status | Discontinued | Current |
| Screen size | 7 | |
| Resolution | 1024 × 600 (169 ppi) | |
| OS | Based on Android OS 2.3.3 | Based on Android OS 4.0.3 |
| CPU | Dual-core 1 GHz TI OMAP4 4430 | Dual-core 1.2 GHz TI OMAP4 4430 |
| GPU | Imagination Technologies PowerVR SGX540 | |
| RAM | 512 MB | 1 GB |
| Wi-Fi | 802.11 b/g/n | |
| Storage | 8 GB | |
| Dimensions | 190 × 120 × 11.4 mm (7.48 × 4.72 × 0.45 in) | 189 × 120 × 11.5 mm (7.44 × 4.72 × 0.45 in) |
| Weight | 413 g (14.6 oz) | 400 g (14 oz) |
| Battery | 4400 mAh | |
Gallery
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The Kindle Fire in horizontal position displaying web page
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Kindle Fire 7 in (180 mm) size relative to a hand
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The iPad (left) compared with the Kindle Fire (right)
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The Kindle Fire (left) compared with the iPod Touch (right)
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