Amazon Kindle News - August Digest
The past month has brought a string of good news for Amazon, and the Kindle line as a whole. While competition has been growing increasingly strong, there is a light at the end of the tunnel! Any time now we should be getting some substantial and/or official information about the Kindle Tablets and new Kindle eReaders.
There has, in fact, been a substantial reveal already, if a recent TechCrunch report is to be believed. Up until now we have been anticipating no fewer than two Kindle Tablets, a 7” and a 10”, making use of Android 3.0 or later to provide an experience that would rival that of the iPad for a less off-putting price. It seems that there was a great deal of truth to this, but that some small changes of plan and clarification have taken place. For a point by point look at the information available so far on the upcoming Amazon Kindle Tablet see this Kindle Tablet Review on "unofficial Kindle blog".
According to the aforementioned hands-on review, at launch we can expect only a 7” Kindle Tablet with any further devices depending on the success of this launch. It will run a highly customized version of Android, probably forked well before Honeycomb, but optimized and altered to such a degree that it should provide a completely unique experience.
We can also expect a user experience centered around Amazon’s Cloud services. Music, Movies, eBooks, and Apps will all be accessible at the touch of a button through tight integration with the Amazon.com store, and where applicable the media will be streamed rather than stored locally. This will mean little on-board memory is required and probably not much in the way of processing power. Given the emphasis on streaming, the fact that this account also mentions an intended lack of 3G support is perhaps slightly troubling, but many reports have indicated that that feature will be available shortly after the initial release.
Overall, even if the slightly underpowered tablet doesn’t meet the highest expectations of ardent Kindle and Android enthusiasts, it should give consumers a functional and fully featured budget option with a lot going for it. Amazon is pretty much the only company on the market right now to rival Apple in terms of App Store content, and the fact that they’re reportedly making a great user experience the priority rather than just bumping up the stats for better comparisons on paper is very encouraging. The newest anticipated release window is late November.
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