While taking a close look at the Kindle Fire this week in New York City at the big Amazon event, we got several different perspectives on the brand new cloud-heavy elementally-named tablet. What you’re going to find is that, like all presentations of products at events such as these, there is a bit more detail in wings that, while the group presenting the device doesn’t mean to hide, simply isn’t as relevant to the general public, and is therefor not revealed unless someone specifically asks. That’s where Vince (behind the camera in this case) comes in.
The video you see below is our Android Community hands-on (or eyes-on if you prefer) video of the Kindle Fire in which we’re given a basic rundown of the features that are public already, followed by some Q and A. Past the standard look, the PR rep we’re speaking with opens a 3rd party magazine app and the questions begin.
Kindle Fire hands-on video
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Android Community: Do you have to swipe or can you just [tap]?
Amazon PR: This one’s an app so it requires swiping.
AC: What about zooming in and out?
PR: I don’t know if they support it – we support multitouch zooming, but it doesn’t look like they support it here [in this app].
AC: Can you side-load PDFs?
PR: Yeah sure, but we don’t think people are going to do that as much because under the docks tab you have an email address for each Kindle Fire so you can just email [content] for free and it’ll just magically appear on the shelf.
At this point some of the questions come from other publications, so we’ll just switch to Q and A, watch the video to see who asks what if you need to know.
Q: Do you have an email client on there?
A: We do have an email client we’re not showing today, but it will come out of the box with an email client.
Q: And what about if you want to do some word processing, what’s the best way to go about doing something like that?
A: App store. Hopefully we’ll have multiple selections by the time we ship, in the app store, that’s the plan.
Q: Is it just going to be Amazon App Store or will there be stock Android App Store [Android Marketplace] as well?
A: Today it’s just he Amazon App Store – we’ll certainly talk to Google – if they’re interested – we’ll certainly talk to them.
Q: You’re doing browsing, can’t you [access] the Android Market that way?
A: Well no, because Google requires that you authenticate the device with their DRM and we don’t have their DRM on the device at this point.
Q: From a hardware perspective, what ports are available? Is it just charging?
A: Yes just USB, that’s for connecting to your PC or also we have a charger, fast charger, and then on the bottom you have a headphone jack for headphones and then a power/sleep button.
Q: And then battery – how long? Usage-wise – video?
A: You should get – in sort of a run-down test – you should get three films. If you want to play them without Wi-fi on you should get up to seven hours.
We’re pretty bummed that this device doesn’t appear at the moment to have any capabilities for outputting video to bigger screens, in particular. As far as using the tablet for media, unless Amazon is seeing some sort of quick trend away from such functionality, transmitting to bigger screens is a must for your humble narrator and crew. WIll this hurt sales? We’re can’t quite yet be sure!
Check out the rest of the news on this tablet by searching for FIRE!
In Bezos’ presentation he talked about watching a film on the Kindle Fire and then picking up where you left off on another device (like the home TV). This isn’t done by the Kindle transmitting to the other device but by Whispersync keeping your different devices in step.
So I can’t see the suggestion in your final paragraph being high on their list.