Hasta La Gadget!

As expected, the big news at today’s gadget-filled Amazon event is the successor to the Kindle Fire, which was launched in New York, roughly this time last year. It’s not the Fire 2, however — this is the Kindle Fire HD. It’s clear the minute you grab hold of it that Amazon wanted to start over with this device in a number of ways. There’s none of that OEM build quality from the first go-round. This is a nice, slim device that really feels as though it can stand up to some of the nicer Android tablets out there — we’d certainly put our initial impressions of build up there with the Nexus 7, which just happens to share the same screen size and 1280 x 800 resolution.

The corners of the tablet are more rounded than its predecessor, with a glossy bezel going around the display — a little bit of the rubberized backing creeps out on top of this. There are no buttons here, however. If you want to effect the screen, give it a tap and you get a small virtual menu on the side. As advertised, the display is quite vivid. Amazon talked up the decrease of glare, though it was a bit hard to tell just how successful the company was, given the fact that we’re indoors. The device has a matte rear, with that stereo speaker going down a line in a middle, vents on either side.

Performance-wise, this seemed pretty snappy running off a heavily-skinned version of Android 4.0, and we got the pre-loaded (at least on Amazon’s own tablet) Hunger Games movie to load quite quickly, thanks no doubt to all of the investment the company put into the WiFi side of this device. Interestingly, there was a little lag as we were flipping through the pages of a book, with the Fire doing a little loading every few pages or so.

Myriam Joire contributed to this report.

Continue reading Kindle Fire HD 7-inch hands-on (Update: video)

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Kindle Fire HD 7-inch hands-on (Update: video) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 06 Sep 2012 15:15:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Amazon is on a roll at its Kindle press event today, unveiling tons of new hardware, but it’s also got some software tricks up its sleeve too: the company just announced X-Ray for Movies, a feature that uses the Internet Movie Database (IMDB) to name the actors for you. As you might know, Amazon already offers X-Ray for books, but this is the first time you can use the feature to get more information about films. To active X-Ray, just pause whatever you’re watching and you’ll see things like actor bios, a cast list and links to other titles (which you can purchase, natch). All told, not exactly a novel idea, but for Amazon, at least, it’s a logical extension for X-Ray. Look for it on the new Kindle Fire HD or the smaller $159 Fire that was also announced earlier.

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Amazon announces X-Ray for Movies, a Kindle feature that uses IMDB to name the actors for you originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 06 Sep 2012 14:34:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Amazon isn’t content to limit its attention to hardware today. It just introduced Kindle Serials, a way of consuming a steady stream of content: buy once and you get all future issues of a text, with new segments appended to the old as they arrive. Only eight titles are available to start, but Amazon is promising a modern take on history by offering Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist and The Pickwick Papers for free, serialized the way they were many decades ago. Episodes will cost $1.99 a pop, which makes them tempting for readers who just want a small literary snack — and authors that want to start seeing income in weeks rather than months or years.

Follow the Amazon liveblog here!

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Amazon intros Kindle Serials: buy once, get them all originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 06 Sep 2012 14:11:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Have you been enviously eyeing the self-illuminating screen on the Nook SimpleTouch with GlowLight, but didn’t want to give up your digital library of Kindle wares? Dear reader, today is your lucky day, with Amazon announcing the Kindle Paperwhite. No, not paperweight, Paperwhite. It has a new, front-lit display that will let you read in the dark, and a capacitive touchscreen that goes away from the IR based systems we’ve seen in the past.

Jeff Bezos tells us that it has 25 percent more contrast than the Pearl screens in the current Kindles and, with 212ppi, it has a 62 percent higher resolution. It relies on a fiber optic like system to direct light down onto the display, not unlike the Nook but, from what we can see, the color is much whiter. It’s just 9.1mm thick, the battery is said to last for eight weeks and there are no physical buttons for control. You’re entirely dependent on that touchscreen to flip those pages — which, by the way, are said to turn 15 percent faster.

The interface has seen some tweaks too. The fonts are more detailed now, as they should be with that higher resolution, and you can tweak the brightness of the display with a slider. The software will calculate your reading speed and estimate how long it will take you to finish a given chapter or book and there are now author bios.

Price is $119 for the WiFi version and it ships October 1st! If you’d like a little 3G connectivity with your Kindle, you’re looking at $179.

Follow the Amazon liveblog here!

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Amazon announces $119 Kindle Paperwhite with illuminated, capacitive touch display originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 06 Sep 2012 13:49:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Not sick of liveblogs yet? Great news! We’re getting settled down in sunny (well, overcast, at the moment) Santa Monica, CA, in order to bring you the latest news from Amazon. We’re not entirely sure what to expect this time out, but we’ve heard rumblings about a Kindle Fire 2, some new e-readers and even talk of a Kindle phone. What does the future hold? Click here and stay tuned to find out.

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Amazon’s press conference is today — get your liveblog right here! originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 06 Sep 2012 08:15:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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