Hasta La Gadget!

Amazon’s Kindle Fire HD 7- and 8.9-inch slates have only seen limited shores since they were formally announced, but today the company said they’re now available for pre-order in more than “170 countries and territories around the world.” We could try and list all the new tablet markets, but it’s easier to say that until now, they’ve only found spots in Amazon stores in the US, Europe and Japan. We’re not surprised to see the hardware get a much wider release, given that the e-tailer revealed its plan to take the Appstore global last month. The only other nugget in the PR is an expected shipping date of June 13th. Head over to your local Amazon portal to confirm if your region is one of the lucky 170.

Update: Amazon’s issued a second PR saying those international plans for the Appstore are no longer plans — it’s now up and running in “nearly 200 countries.”

Filed under: Tablets, Amazon

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Source: Amazon

Amazon’s just updated its Appstore today with a much welcome offering for avid gamers: Xbox SmartGlass. Microsoft’s app-based second screen solution has been available on iOS and Android since late last fall, but despite sharing a kernel with Google’s OS, hadn’t been made dispensable to Kindle Fire / Fire HD owners until now. The app’s been configured to scale natively on Amazon’s refreshed tablet line, letting users navigate their Xbox 360 remotely, push and pull streaming content, as well as access achievements, messaging and Xbox Music. So if it’s the living room of the future you’re after, you might want to hit up the source and make that free download your own.

Filed under: Tablets, Software, Mobile, Microsoft, Amazon

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Source: Amazon

Thinking of rounding out your entertainment center’s arsenal with an Android-based game console? You’ve certainly got options: Ouya, GameStick and Project Shield are all vying for a spot on your couch. On the other hand, you might already have a perfectly serviceable Android device just waiting to be converted into a makeshift games console — that’s where Green Throttle Games comes in. By pairing a dual-stick gamepad with a console-like game launcher, Green Throttle aims to turn any Android device into a gaming platform. We spent some time with a developer build of the setup late last year, but today the company officially launched the Green Throttle Arena and its companion Atlas controller. We popped in to the firm’s Santa Clara office to see what changed.

Filed under: Gaming, Tablets

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As we begin 2013, we’re stuck in a kind of tablet limbo. Most companies rushed to get devices out for the fall, while the models we saw at CES 2013 aren’t yet shipping. As such, it’s a mostly familiar deck, with Apple, Google and Microsoft once again striving for the top spot. That said, there are new entries from Amazon and ASUS, and many of us who didn’t score some sweet loot this holiday season have a slate-sized pile of cash to spend. If you’re in that situation, continue on for our first tablet guide of 2013.

Note: If you’re looking for tablets with an Atom or Core i5 CPU, you’ll find those in our forthcoming laptop buyer’s guide, since they have the same guts as notebooks (or netbooks, in some cases). For the purposes of this tablet guide, we define tablets as slate-type devices with low-power ARM processors.

Filed under: Tablets, Apple, Samsung, Microsoft, ASUS, Google, Amazon

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While many of us are still recovering from New Year’s celebrations, Amazon is considerably clearer-headed: it wants us ready for the winter school term that’s about to start. Appropriately, it’s offering a surprisingly steep discount on the Kindle Fire HD 8.9 for students. Americans headed back to class can get $50 off the price of the larger tablet for the whole of January, regardless of the capacity or the presence of LTE. The catch, apart from needing a .edu email address for the Amazon Student program, is the requirement for an active Prime subscription — although that’s no great shakes when Amazon accepts both the free six-month offer and the $39 yearly student plan. At $249, the discounted Kindle Fire HD is tempting for anyone who can do their course shopping at the Kindle Store… or just wants a convenient distraction during mid-terms.

Filed under: Tablets, Amazon

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Via: SlashGear

Source: Amazon