Amazon isn’t just taking pre-orders for its new Kindle Fire and Kindle Fire HD tablets in the US. For the first time, the tablets are also available internationally. You can place orders with Amazon in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the UK.
The first two models to launch in those countries are the new Kindle Fire and the Kindle Fire HD 7. There’s no word on if or when we’ll see the Kindle Fire HD 8.9 or the Kindle Fire HD with 4G LTE in Europe.
Amazon is charging £129 for the Kindle Fire in the UK, and €159 in countries that use the Euro.
The Kindle Fire HD is going for £159 in the UK and €199 elsewhere. Those prices are a little higher in Europe than in the US, since Euros and pounds tend to be worth a bit more than dollars these days. But taxes are also generally higher in Europe as well.
With the launch of the new tablets in Europe, Amazon is also now opening the Appstore for Android apps in those countries, as well as offering digital books, music, movies, and other content.
Interestingly, the new Kindle and Kindle Paperlight eReaders aren’t yet available for purchase from Amazon’s European stores.
Amazon has been using advertising to subsidize the price of its E Ink Kindle eBook readers since last year. But this is the first time the company is bringing ads tot he lock screen of its color Android-based tablets.
Since the ads will only show up on the lock screen, you’ll only see them when you tap the power button on your device. Once you slide to unlock, they’ll go away.
Amazon has decided to enter the $499 tablet space by offering a tablet with an HD display, 32GB of storage, and 4G LTE wireless data. While it’s the most expensive Kindle Fire tablet, the
Kindle Fire HD with 4G LTE
is also one of the cheapest tablets available with 4G — especially when you factor in the cost of a data plan.
Amazon has announced that for $49.99 per year, customers will be able to use up to 250MB of data per month. They’ll also get 20GB of online storage, and a $10 Amazon appstore credit.
In other words, over the course of a year, you can pick up a Kindle Fire HD and use the 4G service and pay just $549. A 32GB Apple iPad 3 with 4G LTE, but no data plan costs $729.
4G service will be provided by AT&T, and Amazon says customers will also be able to upgrade to data plans with 3GB or 5GB of data per month… but pricing for those plans hasn’t yet been revealed.
Of course, 250MB isn’t all that much data. I’ll be curious to see what other plans are available for heavier data users — but if you plan to use your tablet mostly around the house or in other locations with WiFi, but want to be able to check your email on the go, this is a pretty fantastic price.
You can order the 7 inch model starting today
for $199
. It will ship September 14th. The 8.9 inch tablet goes up for pre-order today
for $299
, and ships starting November 20th.
Amazon Kindle Fire HD 8.9
The 8.9 inch model has a 1920 x 1200 pixel IPS display with 254 pixels per inch. Amazon says it also reflects 25 percent less glare thanks to improved screen technology.
The 7 inch tablet has a 1280 x 800 pixel screen. Amazon says this model will get 11 hours of battery life, although a battery life claim for the larger model is curiously absent.
Since HD video takes up more space than standard definition, Amazon is increasing the amount of storage available. The Kindle Fire HD will be available in 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB varieties.
The Kindle Fire HD tablets feature TI OMAP 4470 dual core processors, offering percent better performance than the chip in the original Kindle Fire — and Amazon claims it also faster than the NVIDA Tegra 3 quad-core chip (at least in terms of memory bandwidth… which is one way to measure things, I suppose).
Amazon Kindle Fire HD 7
The new tablets have dual stereo speakers, Dolby Digital Plus audio, two antennas and other upgrades to improve WiFi performance. There’s also a front-facing HD camera.
The tablets also feature HDMI output, WiFi, and Bluetooth — which is a big step up from the original Kindle fire, which had WiFi but no Bluetooth or HDMI.
Amazon is also introducing new software features including WhisperSync for voice, which lets you listen to audiobooks and pick up reading where you left off with a text book. And there’s a new X-Ray for movies feature which lets you view IMDB data for a movie as you’re watching. Want to know who an actor is? You can look it up while you’re watching a video.
WhisperSync for Games lets you save your game progress and synchronize it across devices — so you can start playing a game and continue from the same level on another device. That’s something that’s been sorely missing from the Android smartphone and tablet experience to date.
The Kindle Fire tablets are also getting a new email client with support for Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, and Exchange. It can also sync your calendar and contact data.
With starting prices of $199, the new Kindle Fire HD tablets may have out-done the Google Nexus 7 in the spec department. The 7 inch model has Bluetooth and HDMI, which the Nexus 7 lacks. It also has 16GB of storage, which is twice what you get with Google’s tablet.
Of course, the Google Nexus 7 also includes a quad-core NVIDIA Tegra 3 chip, Android 4.1 Jelly Bean software and support for the Google Play Store with access to hundreds of thousands of apps (the Amazon Appstore has just 50,000). But Amazon’s making a pretty compelling case for its tablet with Whispersync for games, videos, and more, and Amazon already has the better book, movie, and music stores.
