The rumors are starting to heat back up regarding Amazon and their Kindle Fire tablet lineup. We’ve been hearing little bits of information about a possible refresh to their Kindle Fire HD lineup, and some new price cuts to existing models are fueling that fire even more. With a new Nexus 7 here, Amazon is surely coming up with something quick.
Late last month some rumors surfaced claiming Amazon was working on some newer, even higher resolution tablets than what they have now, and the details even claimed Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 800 quad-core would be powering the devices. That sure would beat out Google’s Nexus 7 in the spec battle, but can they still compete on price is the question.
After those initial reports we started to get excited about Amazon’s next slate, but yesterday news surfaced of something else. In order to better compete in the price battle, Amazon could be moving to MediaTek processors for the Kindle Fire HD lineup refresh. The report from DigiTimes even claims the Fire could use their new 8-core chip.
We’re not exactly sure what Amazon has planned for their new tablet, but the current gen was revealed last year in September, so we could see the same announcement arrive next month. If that’s true, the $40 price cut to the existing $199 model that arrived earlier this week sure makes sense. If all goes as expected Amazon should be announcing a new slew of tablets in late September or early October just in time for the holiday season. There’s also talk of an Amazon smartphone, so we’ll keep our eyes open.
No comparison to the Nexus 7. Try again Amazon. I love your prices but your tablet is lame-o.
Charles, I had a Nexus 7 and switched to the Kindle Fire HD. I found the Kindle had a superior screen, much better sound and easier to hold. I could sideload – without rooting- GMail, Google Drive, and other android apps that the Amazon App Store did not have.
If the rumors are true, and the new Kindle Fire HD has the snapdragon; Amazon will beat the Nexus 7 with a better processor, at least equal screen and sound. This is not lame-o.
Charles, until we get our mits on the updated versions of the Kindle Fire, can you really say its anything, good or bad? The main problem I had with the first round of offerings, including the Kindle Fire HDs, was the responsiveness. My wife complains incessantly about how any game requiring touch timing is virtually unplayable on the device. I get tired of hearing about it 🙂 That being said, the underlying tablet’s organization and usability is great for entry level users who aren’t power users. It works, the way you interact with it is fairly intuitive, and it doesn’t overwhelm the non-tech-savvy.
For the next edition of tablets, I expect Amazon to have the touch lag addressed. Its v2 people, testing for component selection and touch optimization is going to be less forgiving this time around. If the tablets have the same old touch delay and finnickyness, I think we can all pan them as power users. But if decent specs are mated with reasonable operation at the current price points, or even close to them, its hard to not like that, even compared to the Nexus 7.
This article actually appears to be somewhat inaccurate in its mention of MediaTek. If you follow the string of referenced articles, it turns out that the MediaTek reference in the Economic Daily News (a chinese business daily) only mentioned the MediaTek chip in reference to the Kindle Fire base tablet! Not the HD versions. It could be that both are true, snapdragon in the 7″ HD refresh and the 8.9″ HD flavor, with the MediaTek offering as a cheaper option in the down-range base offering. Remember that the new 7″ base offering is intended to come in at the price point of today’s basic Kindle Fire but with capability equivalent or better than the current 7″ Kindle Fire HD. With that strategy in mind, the price points and capability story work out perfectly for this to be the case.