After seeing a friend of mine, who owns this gizmo, early this year, I was fascinated by the features of this more-than-just-an-e-book- reader mini-tablet computer. I searched its name on the web later that day to learn more about its features. The following day I had my own Kindle Fire, which is the finest among the Amazon Kindles as of now. It goes without saying that this gadget is quite useful to my daily life.
The Kindle Fire was launched in the U.S. market late last year on November 15, 2011. Currently, Amazon.com Inc. claims this gadget captured 22 percent on tablet sales in the U.S. alone after 9 months. This makes the second most profitable tablet after the Apple Inc.’s iPad. Let me tell you what makes this mini-tablet computer very popular.
Kindle Fire is the first colored screen among the Kindle tablets of Amazon.com Inc. The touchscreen’s color is superb with extra-wide viewing angle. This handy Android gizmo has external dimensions of 7.5×4.7×0.45 inches and you can hold it comfortably with one hand. The size is just perfect which is neither too small for the images on the screen to see, nor too big to fit inside the bag’s pocket. The weight is only 413 grams, it is very portable indeed. It weighs lesser than an iPad but much bigger screen than smartphones for better viewing. The power button is the only physical button this gadget has and everything including the volume adjustments will be manipulated through the option menu on the screen’s software button. Some people do not like it but I found it as a user friendly and simple. The mini-tablet’s display is extra durable Amazon says it is chemically strengthened to be 20 times stiffer and 30 times harder than plastic. Battery life is up to 8 hours of continuous reading of e-books or may vary depending on the type of Wi-Fi usage such as video playback, web browsing and downloading content. However, charging time takes 4 hours which I suggest you doing it when sleeping at night or when not using your Kindle Fire.
According to Amazon, Kindle Fire has up to 20 million songs download capacity. Now this is very appealing to all music lovers! The gadget’s sound system is 3.5mm stereo audio jack, top-mounted stereo speakers. The audio has a fantastic quality! What a fortune to have this gadget by playing the appropriate music when having an instant party with friends, picnic in the park with your family or sunset dining in a beach resort with your significant someone.
In the meantime, movies and TV program fanatics have the benefit to free download, purchase, rent or stream more than 100,000 movies including new release and favorite TV shows. Long travel time inside the bus or train will no longer be boring or sleepy as you can now watch your favorite currently released movies.
For those who are bookworms, the Kindle store is offering over 1 million books which includes 800,000 titles for only $9.99 or even lesser. Also there are over 2 million copyright free and classic books such as Pride and Prejudice, Les Misérables, Oliver Twist and many others to download. For your kiddos, there are more than 1000 delightfully-illustrated children books for them to read or for you to tell bedtime stories. The Kindle Owners’ Lending Library allows you to choose from over 145,000 books, these includes 100 new release and former New York Times best sellers.
Do you like publications? Well known magazines such as Popular Mechanics, Marie Claire, and Better Homes and Gardens have shiny, full-color layouts, photographs and illustrations. While Vanity Fair, Wired, and GQ come with built-in video, audio and other interactive features.
Well, those who are Amazon Prime members have greater advantages compare to those who are not. Prime’s benefits includes unlimited, instant streaming of more than 10,000 popular movies and TV shows, Free Two-Day Shipping on millions of items, and admission to 100,000 popular Kindle books through the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library. If you are not a Prime member yet, Amazon automatically gives you a free month to try it through your Kindle Fire.
With the assistance of the Amazon Cloud, which is like a huge warehouse that keeps all Amazon digital content, there is no need to rely on your memory to locate all downloaded materials from the Amazon store. Amazon Cloud makes it simple and easy for you retrieving organized music files, movies, etc. on the screen.
Attention to all responsible parents! There is no need to worry for your kids to see unnecessary images when this gadget is in their hands. With Kindle Fire’s Parental Control feature, children are prevented from web browsing and most of all content purchasing. This is done by simply putting a password in the settings menu. So let kids read children e-books or play multiple kinds of games with worry free on your part. By the way, there are thousands of Game Apps that are available for download which includes the popular Angry Birds, Plants Vs. Zombies and Words with Friends.
Downloading e-books, music and movies from the Amazon store to tablet computer wasn’t very easy not until Kindle Fire came. This is because it has a fast Dual-Core Processor for speedy and powerful performance. This allows you to stream music or read e-books while downloading movies.
The gadget has a built-in Wi-Fi called Amazon Silk which makes streaming videos and web browsing extremely fast. Amazon Silk is an innovative, cloud-accelerated browser to leverage the computing speed and power of the Amazon Web Services cloud. This feature supports Adobe, Flash and Player. Now this enables you to read email messages from your Yahoomail, Gmail, AOL, Hotmail, etc. accounts into a single inbox only. This also enables you to send email documents including Word, PDF and more. Sending documents is done through Send to Kindle which available on the Amazon website for a free download.
The Kindle Fire doesn’t have a digital camera, video and audio recorder, GPS and other unnecessary features you don’t need anyway in a tablet. I have a digital camera with video recorder so it’s okay. I don’t expect this mini-tablet that only costs $199 will have all the features.
In spite all those great features of Kindle Fire that I mention above, the great thing is that it is affordable. It is reported that the cost of manufacturing a single unit of this gadget amounts to $150. Amazon may have a small profit margin for Kindle Fire but this mini-tablet computer serves its purpose for it is made for consumers to buy more e-books, music, movies and TV programs from the Amazon store. Greater profit for Amazon.com Inc. is not from this hardware but from the software the company sells downloaded through this mini-tablet computer.
If you’re looking for a feature-packed yet affordable ebook reader and/or tablet , then the Kindle Fire is a good fit for you. Check it out today.
[wp_graphic id=”button10″ type=”buttons” align=”center” width=”200px” url=”/go/KindleFireHD/”][/wp_graphic]
