Amazon's 7-inch Kindle Fire HD Now Available

By Kevin Parrish
published

Consumers can now purchase the 7-inch Kindle Fire HD and the revamped Kindle Fire.

As promised, Amazon has launched the 7-inch Kindle Fire HD tablet, allowing consumers to purchase the 16 GB model immediately. For those who want the 32 GB model, Amazon is gladly accepting pre-orders for $249 now, and will ship the tablet on October 25, conveniently one day before Microsoft unloads Windows 8 and the first wave of related devices on consumers.

As previously reported, the Kindle Fire HD sports a 7-inch HD LCD screen with a default resolution of 1280 x 800. Powereing the device is a masked Android 4.0 "Ice Cream Sandwich" and a dual-core 1.2 GHz OMAP4460 SoC from Texas Instruments. Also thrown into the mix is 10-point multi-touch capabilities, a battery offering 11 hours of continuous use, 1 GB of RAM, dual-band Wi-Fi connectivity (meaning 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz), and more.

For $40 less, customers can purchase the revamped original Kindle Fire for $159.99 USD. Not much has changed with this gadget unfortunately, as it still sports the same 7-inch screen with a 1024 x 600 resolution, 8 GB of internal storage, and single-band Wi-Fi connectivity. There are also no volume buttons, and there's no SD card slot for expanding the storage, but Amazon has doubled the memory and threw in a better battery for improved performance, so that's a plus.

For consumers who think bigger is better, Amazon's Kindle Fire HD 8.9 will be avialable on November 20, costing $299 for the 16 GB version and $369 for the 32 GB version. Still not enough? Try the Kindle Fire HD 8.9 4G LTE models launching on the same day, costing $499 for the 32 GB version and a hefty $599 for vthe 64 GB version. All four will come packed with a dual-core OMAP4470 SoC clocked at 1.5 GHz, a 1920 x 1200 resolution, dual-band Wi-Fi connectivity and more.

"We're taking on the most popular price point for a tablet, $499, but doubling the storage and incredibly, adding ultra-fast 4G LTE wireless," said Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com Founder and CEO. "Kindle Fire HD is not only the most-advanced hardware, it's also a service. When combined with our enormous content ecosystem, unmatched cross-platform interoperability and standard-setting customer service, we hope people will agree that Kindle Fire HD is the best high-end tablet anywhere, at any price."

To get your new Kindle Fire HD, head here.

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Kevin Parrish
11 Comments Comment from the forums
  • How do I win this?????
    Reply
  • bak0n
    I already got mine in the mail today. Huge improvement over the last generation. I can see the screen outside even. The speakers work good too.
    Reply
  • blazorthon
    ArticleFor consumers who think bigger is better, Amazon's Kindle Fire HD 8.9 will be avialable on November 20, costing $299 for the 16 GB version and $369 for the 32 GB version. Still not enough? Try the Kindle Fire HD 8.9 4G LTE models launching on the same day, costing $499 for the 32 GB version and a hefty $599 for vthe 64 GB version. All four will come packed with a dual-core OMAP4470 SoC clocked at 1.5 GHz, a 1920 x 1200 resolution, dual-band Wi-Fi connectivity and more.
    Slight typo there, Tom's ;)
    Reply
  • livebriand
    "For consumers who think bigger is better, Amazon's Kindle Fire HD 8.9 will be avialable on November 20, "
    Another typo...
    Reply
  • eternalkp
    Why would any tablet be relevant after the announcement of the Google Nexus 7?
    Reply
  • blazorthon
    eternalkpWhy would any tablet be relevant after the announcement of the Google Nexus 7?
    Why would any other tablet not be relevant just because of the Nexus 7 tablet?
    Reply
  • bustapr
    eternalkpWhy would any tablet be relevant after the announcement of the Google Nexus 7?you must not have read any of the articles or heard of the hundreds of nexus 7 owners who had the tablets performance drop significantly when memory is full. not to mention the tablets are like 6gb and 13 gb each instead of the 8gb and 16gb promised. kindle fire is actually an amazing tablet for the price.
    Reply
  • teh_chem
    I pre-ordered the 64GB 8.9" HD with 4G. I can't WAIT for it. As a huge amazon services user, I'll be so thankful for a tablet that won't be constantly crashing apps that I just want to use for media streaming (die in a fire ye old TF101 and the crappy ASUS software team that botched up update after update).
    Reply
  • kawininjazx
    I'm not an Apple person at all (I have a Droid X and Nexus 7), but if I was gonna spend $599 on a tablet, I would pick an iPad 3 over a Kindle Fire. Of course, $249 for a tablet is the best price for me, that's why I have the Nexus.
    Reply
  • teh_chem
    I think what you get for that $600 is not the same in both cases since it depends on what platform you're "invested" in, so to speak. I found out that for me, as an android user (phone and TF101), the services I had access to (and the quality of those services) turned out to be a significant part of the decision (in my case it's a standard android tablet vs. Amazon's tablet). I use Prime, Kindle, and Amazon MP3--and the general quality/stability of standard android platforms/apps is sketchy at best (whereas, on my gf's original Kindle Fire--which is lack-luster in terms of most everything, it's still stable when running all the amazon services--which one would expect).

    I think, though, if Android tablets were worth much of anything on the "productivity" or "creation" side, it would be a no-brainer--standard tablet all the way. But for now, Android's advantages of being a wide and open-platform also work against it in that case--it's sooo difficult to ensure any amount of stability and user experience across devices.

    I'm all for whatever people want to use, whether it's an ipad, kindle, android, etc.--but as I've transitioned through the various ones, Amazon's mostly-locked but partially-open platform is by far the most appealing since tablets are still content-consumption devices. Where, IMHO, Apple shows contempt for their users (or rather, contempt for their users to have freedom with their hardware, and they had to funnel everyone through iTunes, and still do to some extent), Amazon is more-lax, but still not as lax as the general Android market. But I think they all appeal to different populations of people, and I'm all for more options for everyone. :)
    Reply