Kindle goes Social with Android
Amazon Kindle is an e-book reader that uses the E-Ink electronic paper display that shows up to 16 shades of gray, minimizes power use and simulates reading on paper.
Recently Amazon announced that they will launch a tablet that most likely is going to be called “Kindle Fire”. The tablets are expected to sport a 7-inch backlit display. It has been designed by the same company that worked on BlackBerry’s PlayBook, Quanta. Being of the same form factor it’s possible that the two devices will look similar at first glance. The tablet is expected to be powered by a T1 dual-core OMAPchip and it could have a very limited on-board memory of up to 6 GB.
It is very clear that the “Kindle Fire” would be running Google’s Android mobile operating system.
The users of Android are expanding and they enjoy the Android Market, where it is easy to download different useful apps (and it’s for free), but it seems that users of the “Kindle Fire” would have to download and use applications directly from Amazon’s own AppStore istead of the Google Android Market. Amazon has gone into customizing the Android operating system for its tablets very deeply, so users won’t be able to make out whether their “Kindle Fire” is running on Gingerbread or Honeycomb.
Other features are planned for the “Kindle Fire” tablets as well. Initially there should be a WiFi version only and it looks like Amazon is negotiating with mobile carries, so it is possible that a 3G version will also be launched. Amazon is planning to work towards to integrate almost all of its services into the “Kindle Fire” tablets (including MP3 service, Kindle app for book reading and the Instant Video Player).
It is exciting to see how Amazon ties the Kindle reading app with extra social sharing capabilities on the “Kindle Fire” tablets, like it did for the web.
