Amazon has announced the Kindle Fire HDX, 7-inch and 9-inch tablets offering access to Amazon's world of books, music and movies. The Kindle Fire HDX tablets come with 2.2GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processors and 2GB of RAM. Their Adreno 330 graphics will, Amazon says, offer four times the graphical performance of the existing Kindle Fire HD. Amazon also claims up to 11 hours of battery life when using the Kindle Fire HDX tablets. See also: Amazon Kindle Fire HD 8.9-inch review: cheap tablet locked into Amazon's world.
The Amazon Kindle Fire HDX tablets both have a front-facing HD camera for video calling. The high-end 8.9in device has an 8-megapixel rear-facing camera, too.
Kindle Fire tablets are designed for the consumption of media, rather than office work or creativity. So it will be interesting to see how the new Kindle Fire tablets shape up. Andy Ihnatko of our sister publication TechHive has spent a deal of time with the two new Kindle Fire HDX tablets, and here we publish some of this thoughts. We'll be updating our Kindle Fire HDX reviews as we spend more time with the devices.
We don't yet have UK pricing or a release date for the Kindle Fire HDX tablets. You can find that information as it comes available in our story: Amazon Kindle Fire HDX: Release date, price and specs.
Kindle Fire HDX: performance, battery life
How does that new quad-core Snapdragon 800 mobile CPU, running at 2.2GHz, perform when paired with 2GB RAM? Andy Ihnatko was impressed: "The improvements were immediately obvious the moment I took the 8.9 incher for my first spin. Between the Snapdragon CPU and the tablet's OS upgrade to Android Jelly Bean, the Fire's touch latency issues have disappeared. The interface was zippy, even when scrolling through carousels of HD images."
Battery life is more difficult to quantify, of course. Especially in a time-limited hands-on test. But again Andy was impressed with the theory, even if it remains untested: "Despite the pixel-packed display and faster CPU, the Fire HDX still delivers roughly 11 hours of mixed-use operation, according to Amazon.
"The company has also optimized the book reader app for low-power consumption by using only a single CPU core, and by shoving content into special low-power memory. Result: 17 hours of battery life as an e-reader, Amazon says."
Kindle Fire HDX: design, build quality
The 8.9in Kindle Fire HDX is extremely light for a device of this size. It weighs in at 374g, making it only a little heavier than the much smaller iPad mini. This is important for a device that will be used for e-book reading, you need to be able to hold it in one hand for a good length of time. Andy was certainly impressed.
"It feels great in the hand," he said. "No doubt some people will think it feels "cheap," but anybody who spends hours reading books or watching movies on a tablet will love the overall lack of the sensation of heft."
Other design changes include a change to smarter, square edges and bigger power- and volume buttons.
Amazon is also rolling out a set of Origami-style covers for both Kindle HDX models, too.
Kindle Fire HDX: displays
His reasoning was as follows: "The new screens are easier to read in harsh sunlight thanks to brighter displays, as well as a new dynamic contrast control that kicks in to increase the brightness of shadow areas in onscreen images (it works in both photos and HD video).
Viewing the displays in a harshly lit office was no problem, either. Indeed: "Shining an ultra-bright flashlight into the light sensor while a photo of the Grand Canyon was on the display caused the highlights of the image to remain steady while the HDX increased the levels of the shadows," Andy said.
He continued: "True, 100 percent sRGB colour accuracy. I wasn't able to load my own content on the sample devices, but I'm familiar with the color performance of the 2012 Kindle, and I saw an immediate improvement. Amazon also reduced the distance between the pixels and the top cover."
Kindle Fire HDX: cameras
As we mentioned above the 8.9in Kindle Fire HDX has a new 8-megapixel, f2.2 rear-facing camera. There's a custom camera app that supports HDR shooting and panoramas, as the camera shoots stills and video. The 8.9in Kindle Fire HDX's camera seems to take decent, smartphone-grade photos. But we'd need to test it further to give a definitive verdict on this. And anyway - would you really buy a Kindle Fire tablet in order to take photos with it?
Kindle Fire HDX: what else is new?
For one thing Amazon has upgraded the operating system, to code now known as 'Fire OS 3.0'. The carousel view is now backed up by an additional grid view for speeding through apps and content. And new accessibility features make the Fire's interface and content available to people with impaired vision.
Fire 3.0 also gains support for VPN services, Kerberos authentication, and remote device management. Enterprise email and on-device encryption are here, too. That feels odd for a consumer consumption device, but perhaps we'll see Kindle Fire tablets in the enterprise. Keyboards and other input devices are easier to use.
The Kindle HDX's new "Mayday" button is intriguing, found in the main system tray, right next to the Home button. Click it and you will be connected via a video call to a support person. That's right, every Kindle Fire HDX comes with free, 24/7 live video support. It's a great idea, difficult to deliver. Let's see how it works! See also: Group test: what's the best Android tablet? and what's the best tablet?
No comments:
Post a Comment