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.

Filed under: Tablets

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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It’s Amazon day! Greetings from sunny Santa Monica, CA, home of rusty Ferris wheels and namesake of at least one Everclear song we can think of off the top of our head. We’re expecting big news from the online mega-retailer today — after all, we flew across the country to be here. What can we look forward to today? The sequel to the Kindle Fire? Some new e-reading devices? A Kindlephone? Find out today at 1:30PM ET!

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Live from Amazon’s Santa Monica press conference! originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 06 Sep 2012 13:21:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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As the saying goes, it’s all in the timing. But look at it this way: Kobo could have announced its new line of devices the day after Amazon’s big reveal. Instead, the outfit’s looking to take some wind out of Amazon’s sails a few hours before its big event. And while the chances are extremely slim that the company will manage to undercut the looming Kindle news, there’s no question that it’s coming out of the gate swinging, with the announcement of not one, but three new readers: one glowing, one mini and one slathered in Ice Cream Sandwich. The mini and glowing Glo Comfortlight will arrive in October, with the Android-based Arc arriving in November. All told, they’ll range in price from $80 for the Kobo Mini to $250 for the top-end tablet. That’s the short version, but if you follow past the break we’ve got a full rundown of the specs, along with additional photos.

Continue reading Kobo announces three new readers: one glows, one’s small, one runs Ice Cream Sandwich

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Kobo announces three new readers: one glows, one’s small, one runs Ice Cream Sandwich originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 06 Sep 2012 02:27:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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