Nokia’s Here is currently ranked second in the free download Navigation section of Amazon’s Appstore for Android, while the MapQuest app is ranked number one.
“The Kindle Fire has been wildly popular but with no Google Maps and no pre-installed map like most other mobile devices, this is a real opportunity to establish ourselves as the leading brand on this platform, and as a provider of the best map app for its users,” said Skobbler’s co-founder Marcus Thielking in a statement.
Skobbler reckons ForeverMap2′s combination of speedy map engine tech plus OpenStreetMaps data and fully featured offline maps give it the edge over rivals. “We feel that we have pretty much a map engine that is on the same level as Google’s — pure technology wise. And that’s way ahead of our competitors — the non-Googles, including Nokia by the way — out there,” Thielking told me last month.
Other features included in ForeverMap2 include address search, location finder, route calculation and POIs — which all function in both online and offline map versions
Skobbler says it is aiming to become the number one maps offering on the Kindle Fire. The company is taking a different tactic with the Kindle Fire than Google’s Play Store — offering ForeverMap2 as a free download with the offline maps component of the app only available via in-app purchase (on Google Play the app is a paid for download with one country offline map included in the initial price).
ForeverMap2 offline maps on the Kindle Fire app are priced at $0.99/£0.69 for Cities; $1.99 for States; $2.99/£1.99 for countries; $5.99/£3.99 for continents; and $9.99/£7.99 for a global offline map.
Asked how ForeverMap2 can beat Nokia’s Here (also free to download, and offering users the ability to “save map areas & wander without data coverage”), Thielking claims Here offline maps are very limited when compared to ForeverMap2′s fully featured offline maps — noting that Here only lets users download a “certain amount of map tiles”, at a “certain level of detail”. The size that can be downloaded is also “limited” — for instance, he says “you can’t get the entire city of Berlin”. Finally he says Nokia’s method gobbles up a lot of data — claiming that downloading Berlin offline maps via Here takes around 50MB of data.
Skobbler has also made its app available for Barnes & Noble’s NOOK Color, NOOK Tablet and NOOK HD/HD+ slates — in two versions: a free version with online maps, and a paid version which costs $5 that includes offline maps. Thielking says the reason for the two versions is that B&N’s store does not support in-app purchases at present.
Amazon’s latest Kindle Fire HD tablet may have just been released to the public, but that doesn’t mean Amazon isn’t going to put it on sale. It turns out that — for today only — the company is slashing $50 off the regular $299 starting price of the Kindle Fire HD 8.9, which means you can get the new tablet for only $249 for the 16GB version or $319 for the 32GB model.
To take advantage of the deal, you’ll have to be quick, since it only lasts for today and “quantities are limited.” All you have to do is head to the Kindle Fire HD 8.9 product page on Amazon, add it to your cart, and type in FIREHD89 at checkout. From there, the deal will take affect and you’ll save yourself $50 in an instant.
Amazon announced the deal on their Twitter feed, noting that it’s a “special, one-day deal” on the new 8.9-inch tablet. And while you have all day to ponder over the deal, the company notes that you should hurry, since supply is limited. Even if they had an abundant supply of these tablets, we wouldn’t be surprised if they all sold out sometime today.
Amazon’s Kindle Fire HD 8.9 is the company’s latest tablet to add to their Kindle Fire lineup. It has an 8.9-inch IPS LCD display with an impressive resolution of 1920×1200. On the inside, there’s an OMAP4470 dual-core processor clocked at 1.5GHz from Texas Instruments and 1GB of RAM. It also has a front-facing 1.3MP camera for video chatting.
Video game retailer GameStop is now selling select Kindle Fire tablets in stores across the US, just in time for the holiday season. They’re offering the Kindle Fire HD 7-inch tablet for $199.99 at all 4,400 stores, and the non-HD 7-inch version and the 8.9-inch HD for $159.99 and $299.99, respectively, “at select stores.”
However, if you’re still thinking about ordering one off of Amazon instead of driving to your local GameStop, the brick-and-mortar store will give you a $25 Amazon gift card if you buy a Kindle Fire tablet from them, which would essentially bring the price of the non-HD 7-inch Kindle Fire down to just a measly $135.
The deal will only last until January 31, so be sure not to putz around if you’re thinking about grabbing a Kindle Fire tablet anytime soon. If you already happen to have an original Kindle Fire and aren’t getting much use out of it, GameStop will also buy it from you and give you in-store credit for up to $100. You might be able to get a bit more cash out of it on Craigslist or eBay, but this is a great way if you need cash quickly.
GameStop has been growing its business for selling non-gaming devices for a while now. Last year, they started a pilot program to sell tablets in 200 stores, and expanded the program to over 1,600 locations later in May 2012. Back in March, GameStop also began selling refurbished iOS devices.
With the Kindle Fire HD 8.9 comes the most well-rounded Amazon content delivery system you’ve ever held in two hands – but that’s all it is. This device is being sold as exactly the device it was meant to be: the Amazon Vending Machine HD 8.9, and it takes its job seriously. If you could never bring yourself to pick up an iPad and the Apple-bound content environment that is iTunes, nor could you purchase a Nexus 7 or 10 as connected to Google Play, Amazon might be the third heat you were looking for.
Content Delivery System
It’s a mistake to compare the Amazon Kindle Fire HD 8.9 to any other tablet on the market not inside the Kindle Fire family unless you’re a software developer, a hacker, or you’re just about to jump into the digital content arena and have never before purchased yourself a digital video. With the Kindle Fire HD 8.9, the iPad 4th generation (the one with the Lightning port that’s in the store now), and the Google Nexus 10, you’ve got extremely high definition displays, and it’s there you should start if you’re demanding to see the best hardware package.
But here’s the thing: there’s a massive amount of Android tablets on the market today, each of them able to access the whole of the Google Play store. There’s several iPad models in the line’s history, and a set of rather similar Kindle Fire models tablets out there able to access the Amazon content system – but Amazon’s system doesn’t stop at the Kindle Fire. The only system that stops at the hardware (and vice versa) is the iPad.
What the Kindle Fire HD 8.9 does is place the Amazon content system directly at the center of a machine that’s been checked and approved by Amazon itself. With that, it’s been limited to the Amazon content system so that you can be assured an experience that Amazon approves of – Apple does that same thing with the iPad. The Kindle Fire HD 8.9 is indeed a fabulous place to access your Amazon content.
The connectivity on this device is wi-fi but a 4G LTE bit of AT&T mobile data is available from Amazon if you pick up the edition with that ability. The offer behind that LTE is interesting at $50 a year, but with a limit of 250MB of data a month – this means you’ll be able to use this device for email using that data, and if you start watching streaming content or downloading media, you’ll go over in no time at all. Watch the overage costs rack up and that smile will turn upside down real quick.
Hardware
The display is extremely nice, bringing on a resolution of 1920 x 1200 pixels over 8.9 inches, that being 254ppi. That’s less than the iPad 4 and less than the Nexus 10, but up at this resolution we’re not able to tell the difference without getting up real, real close – closer than we’d get on any normal day, that’s for sure.
Colors are reproduced extremely accurately and with the darks on this machine being as deep as they are, we’ve been using this machine as a content machine via the miniHDMI as a top pick. Downloading an HD video from Amazon’s collection and playing it on the device or through the microHDMI port to an HDTV makes for a massively impressive experience – amongst the best on the market if not straight up the best there is with a wire.
The speakers on the Kindle Fire HD 8.9 are Dolby powered and stereo – bringing on two channels for real. The speakers on this device are loud enough that you’ll not want to be a room away from a sleeping baby when them turned all the way up – you’ll wake that baby up. It’s unfortunate that they’re facing backwards as most of the tablet universe still has them aiming, but holding the tablet with two hands has the sound bouncing off your palms – that’s good enough for most.
Battery life on this device is rather good, especially since you’re only working with wi-fi connectivity at this time. LTE might make you bust down a bit quicker when it comes around, but for now you’ve got a couple of days at least with daily usage as a game-player and TV show downloader/watcher. Chatting on Skype (which is, mind you, generally OK but certainly not the nicest Skype experience on the market by a long shot due to less-than-perfect video quality) will drain your battery quickest.
There’s also a rather nice case/cover that you’ll probably want to pick up from Amazon if/when you purchase the Kindle Fire HD 8.9. It’s made by Amazon and looks like what you’re seeing above, complete with a magnetic “smart” off/on function (as the Kindle Fire HD 8.9 does indeed have that sensor) and has a rubbery bumper that allows it to stand up like you’re seeing here too.
Performance
With the processor mentioned above you’ve got a suitable environment in which you can play most if not all of the most high-powered games on the market. What you’ll see in the video below is Asphalt 7, a racing game, opened and tested in a real basic way just so you can see how quick everything renders out and responds – just as nice as the nicest devices on the market today.
We’ve heard of some people having small problems with the user interface and non-immediate opening of apps and switching between screens, but any such problems were negligible from our perspective. This is a high-quality device and Amazon has created a user interface over the top of Android that should do the original creators proud.
You’ve got a processor from Texas Instruments that’s one of the rarest on the market today, the OMAP4470 dual-core used only on the Nook HD family, Samsung Galaxy Premier, the BlackBerry Dev Alpha B, and a variety of oddities. This processor works perfectly well for this device, comparing in performance with the other dual-core processor on them market in a very general sense to the Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 dual-core processor we’ve seen on a large number of smartphones this year including the Galaxy S III and HTC One series.
The processing power here does not bring us as ultra-swift a system as we’re seeing on the Nexus 10 or the iPad 4th gen – but the difference is invisible if you’re not using both one next to the other or doing extensive processor tests in a lab. Once you’ve got it in the lab, on the other hand, you’ll find the device ranking up on systems such as AnTuTu benchmark system with a score of 7247 – nowhere near the quad-core competition.
Store Access
If you’re not planning on purchasing videos from Amazon, you don’t want to use Amazon’s system for music, you’ve got no intention of purchasing any ebooks from Amazon, and you don’t want to use Amazon’s App Store, this is not the tablet for you. This unit is first and foremost a window into the Amazon library of digital content, and you’re going to have to pay for it.
The Amazon store exists at all corners in this device, and the different kinds of media you’re consuming here sit right up front and center. The first display you see on this device once you’ve started it up is a giant set of icons in a side-scrolling gallery that says quite clearly “you’re about to start” rather than “welcome to your Amazon tablet.” If there’s a scale from tablet interfaces that goes from standard computer to window, it starts at Android, moves up to the iPad, and ends at the Amazon Kindle Fire – this is not a device you’re going to use like your notebook or your desktop, it’s a consumption window.
X-Ray
There’s a brand overlay that exists between two different bits of in-content excellence that come with this device working with content from Amazon called X-Ray. This system works in videos as a direct connection to IMDB, showing the actors that are working in essentially any given scene and with books showing keywords and connections to them throughout the story you’re reading – find all the Ali Babas in the story and link in to them with ease.
This system works with a lovely collection of ebooks and videos coming from Amazon – not every single piece of content coming from Amazon, but certainly enough to warrant calling it a great selling point for this tablet. We’re always wondering who the heck that guy is getting his face cut off by the monster in the horror film scene we’re watching – now we know!
Kindle FreeTime
The folks at Amazon have come up with an extremely simple home screen replacement app that brings forth an environment for your kids. This environment is created by you, the parent, and is so simple that you can’t mess it up. You open up Kindle FreeTime and select the profile you want, deciding there what settings you want your child to work with and what apps/media they’re going to be able to see, and bang, you’re done.
From there the person in that profile – child or not – needs a password to exit again. That’s so simple that we wish Amazon would release FreeTime for the Google Play app store – please? Pretty please? For now you’ll need a Kindle Fire to use Kindle FreeTime – and for some parents that might be a deal-maker.
Wrap-up
If you’re deeply invested in the Amazon universe for content, this device is the best content delivery system you’re going to be able to buy today. It’s the biggest tablet Amazon makes at the moment and gives you access to all of your Amazon-held content in high definition, top to bottom. It’s not an Android tablet (as far as the Google Play store is concerned), it’s not an iPad, and it’s not a Windows device. It’s a unique tablet that’s deeply engrained in the Android environment.
The price of this device in its wi-fi configuration – that being the one we’re looking at here in this review – is $299 USD, and for that price there’s no competition unless you want a smaller display and a different content environment. For Amazon users, there’s nothing else – unless of course you consider the smaller version: see our Kindle Fire HD 7 full review as well.
It would appear that the iPad mini isn’t living up to the expectations of the folks over at DisplayMate where they’ve got their eye on the traditions of Apple in the very recent past with the iPad mini. DisplayMate made it clear this week that they felt that Apple was breaking their tradition of bringing “the best display, or at least a great display” to the market, saying that instead the iPad mini has “just a very capable display.”
In tests up against the Google Nexus 7 and the Amazon Kindle Fire HD, Dr. Raymond Soneira of DisplayMate found that Apple’s competitors provided sharper displays, making it clear that they, “both have considerably sharper displays with 216 Pixels Per Inch, and they both delivered considerably sharper text.” Also tested where color gamuts, with the iPad mini coming up with a 62 percent.
Both the Nexus 7 and the Kindle Fire HD have 86 percent color gamut while the iPad 3rd gen and the iPhone 5 have 100 percent color gamut. The iPad mini reflected 53 percent more ambient light than the Nexus 7 in these tests and 41 percent more light than the Kindle Fire HD. Color management processing, on the other hand, was found to be far above average on the iPad mini, this bringing high picture quality and accurate color reproduction across the board.
The iPad mini’s display resolution was up for discussion as far as cost goes – with DisplayMate noting that a retina display, 326-pixel per inch pixel density, would have cost a prohibitive amount given current yields in the industry. Apple’s traditional use of 1,024 by 768 pixel and 2,048 by 1,536 pixel resolutions meant that 163ppi was required with the iPad mini if it wanted to keep with the screen size and work with all legacy apps.
Welcome to Thursday evening, everyone. This afternoon we had a bunch of quarterly reports hit, and some were better than others. Google posted its quarterly report a little prematurely, a blunder that had a hand in driving down the price of the company’s stock. Later on in the day, we heard from Microsoft, which managed to do pretty good in its first quarter. Sadly, AMD posted its results for quarter 3 just a little while ago, and things aren’t looking too good for the company – in fact, it says that it will have to layoff around 15% of its workforce in an attempt to save some money.
While tablets are great for browsing the web and playing games, they’re also becoming great devices to read digital content on like magazines and newspapers. According to marketing and analytics firm comScore, Amazon’s Kindle Fire tablet has the highest readership rates of any other tablet, including the iPad and Barnes & Noble’s NOOK Tablet.
comScore notes that around 1 in 10 tablet owners read digital periodicals on their devices every day as of August 2012. 37.1% of tablet owners read a newspaper on their device at least once a month, while 11.5% read a newspapers roughly every day. 11% is definitely a small figure, but we may see that number creep up in the next few years.
According to comScore, a whopping 43.9% of Kindle Fire users read magazines on their device. The iPad came in at 40.3%, and 13.4% for NOOK Tablet users. The newspaper category was a much closer race, though. The Kindle Fire came in at 39.2%, the iPad with 38.3%, and the NOOK Tablet with 31.8%.
To clarify, this isn’t about which tablet gets the most magazine/newspaper readers (and thus being the most popular tablet in this category), but rather what the most popular type of periodical is on which tablets. The survey was conducted during a three-month period ending in August 2012 consisted of 6,000 tablet owners across the US.
Amazon makes a pretty good case for its Kindle Fire HD and Paperwhite with prices as low as $199 and $119 respectively, but it turns out there’s more at work than just special offers to keep them affordable. In an interview with the BBC, the company’s head honcho Jeff Bezos revealed that they can keep the price tags reasonable since they don’t turn a profit on the devices. “Basically, we sell the hardware at our cost, so it is break even on the hardware,” Bezos said. “We’re not trying to make money on the hardware.” Instead, Amazon banks on making a buck when owners of the slates and e-readers purchase books, movies, games and other content through their digital storefront. This doesn’t exactly come as a surprise, but we’re glad that Jeff’s confirmed our suspicions.
Rovio teased a certain film-inspiredAngry Birds picture a long, long last week, and as expected, it’s another new game — Angry Birds Star Wars. Our furious feathered friends are assuming the likenesses of characters from the epic saga, with the trusty Red Bird taking on Luke Skywalker’s role. It wouldn’t be the Rebel Alliance without a dark side to fight, which is where the Pigs fit into the storyline; even the music and levels for gravity-based play will hark back to the film franchise. In addition to the software, details of related merchandise have also been uncovered, including table games, toys and costumes. The game is out on November 8th for iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Kindle Fire and computers, and if it follows the original storyline, we wonder how Red Bird’s going to feel about his porcine family history.
Amazon’s Cloud Drive has rounded out its European tour with releases in the remaining major markets: Spain and Italy. Pricing in these regions matches that of the UK, Germany and France, with 8 euros (around $10) netting you 20GB of storage for a year, on top of the complimentary 5GB you get for signing up. You’ll be able to access this space through your browser, desktop apps, or any of the new Kindle Fires when they start hitting Euro doorsteps at the end of the month. Plus, Amazon’s giving US customers the ability to share files with whomever they choose, and Mac users worldwide can now upload their iPhoto library hassle-free. With Cloud Drive now available, the Appstore ready to roll, and Fire hardware making its way to the Continent, we’re starting to think Amazon quite likes it there.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
