Based on my experience reading PDF comics, 1440x1050 in 12" is basically perfect, for handling two pages at once in landscape mode. First tablet that comes out with that screen gets my money, solely as a comic reader.
I am very sure that Amazon will be working on a 4.0 upgrade to their version OS just as soon as Google release the source. Version 2.3.3 (the current version they tell developers to work against) just plain sucks as a tablet OS. It is painful to have to work with it - making something that actually looks good and works well for both tablets and large phones using that OS is almost impossible.
For them to break compatibility with the rest of the Android ecosystem would just make no sense at all - in addition to being completely unnecessary.
New bit of info from Cnet
Amazon did its best to one-up the Nook in today’s release, rolling out the laundry list of Fire-friendly apps that will be available on day one, including “Netflix, Rhapsody, Pandora, Twitter, Comics by comiXology, Facebook, The Weather Channel and popular games from Zynga, EA, Gameloft, PopCap and Rovio.”
Amazon Press release: http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=176060&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1628440&highlight=
Amazon having Facebook and the Nook not having Facebook may be a big clincher for the audience they’re going for.
Of course, given how close they are, I think the most interesting differentiator is the Kindle Fire being $50 cheaper vs the Nook thingy being available in brick-and-mortar stores.
(Me, I’m just anxious for my Kindle Touch with new, improved Not Stupidly Designed Lighted Cover.)
Well it looks like I forgot to cancel my Kindle Fire order. My CC was billed and it says shipping soon. Sad part is that I am going out of town so won’t get to play with it until middle of the week.
Engadget review is up. Sounds like it’s about what you’d expect from a $200 tablet: Slow hardware that struggles to keep up with demanding tasks, grafted onto a UI that’s fine for consuming Amazon content, but not well-suited for general-purpose tablet use.
My Nook is my ereader. The Fire is not an ereader…at least that is how I look at it. It will never replace my Nook but what it will do is give me an in on the Kindle bookstore so if there is a spiffy deal there (which happens way more than the B&N store) I can grab it.
Plus, comics, newspapers, twitter, Facebook, Netflix (especially when traveling), internet on my sofa…Fire definitely fits my bill perfectly. Oh and Angry Birds. Yeah I still need to lug my laptop when I travel but hey, it’s a Macbook Air so it weighs nothing!
The Wired review sounded fairly similar… kinda disappointed that at least the browser performance wasn’t better. Actually I thought the hardware was supposed to be on par with other tablets and the ipad?
— Alan
Warning: Comics reading is horribad on the Fire. Too small a screen to read zoomed out, you can’t pinch-zoom. You have to double-tap sections to enlarge them, then double-tap again to go back to full page.
If comics are a primary reason you want a color tablet, you really want a 10" tablet…
(Edit: Apparently ComiXology is available on the Fire, and it has a better reading interface. Still stuck zooming in, though.)
Although given their exclusive partnership with DC, I’d fully expect to see them coming out with Fire applications that “optimize” the reading experience with like pop-out panels and the like. Which isn’t useful in any broad sense, but is useful if you want to read those particular comics.
I question the wisdom of comics/magazines on the fire. I can only imagine Amazon included them to lay the groundwork for the larger version coming out later because otherwise it was a blunder. This size factor just isn’t suited for that.
I would think though, that reading a magazine on a Fire is a better than on a Kindle, no?
Ha, that exclusive is a pretty small deal. Nothing like that. The Fire is terrible for comics/magazines.
Should be arriving tomorrow. Might derail Nanowrimo just a bit if it turns out to be cool…
From the reviews I’ve seen, it’s a better but still crappy experience. You either have to zoom in/out on the pages continuously, or drop the content into a text-only reading view.
Heck, some magazines are even a pain to read on the 9.7-inch iPad screen. (Retro Gamer, for instance, needs zooming even on the bigger iPad.)
I had thought the “text-only” reading view was the default. Plus I don’t think it is text-only. It intersperses the pictures and text into a comic reader like experience.
Still…replicating magazines? I don’t get the appeal.
Mine too. We’ll see…
— Alan
for ebooks I use an e ink kindle. for anything graphicy I use a thinkpad tablet. I would never get anything apple, for better or for worse I develop in and play games in a windows world.
Mine should arrive tomorrow. The goal is to have it replace the VTech reading thingamajigger my 5 year old wants, to play some games, and to use for ebooks. I’m pretty sure my low excpectations will be met.
Okay, so before when I was thinking of two-page spreads, this seemed obvious. But now that I’m thinking about reading page-at-a-time, it seems a lot less so.
My super-awesome, better than any tablet, ThinkPad is 1440x1050 and 12", and it’s ultra-easy to read two-page spreads. If you halve that screen, you end up with like a 8" 1050x720 screen. That’s awfully close to the Fire’s actual dimensions and resolution.
And over in the comic hardware thread, some people were telling me that they use the iPad to comfortably read two-page spreads. So if you halve that, you’ve got 6.7" with a 768x512 resolution, which the Fire easily beats. I’m skeptical that the iPad is actually useful that way, but people do claim it is, so. (And so a standard 10.1" Android tablet is going to be almost right in the middle of that with around a 7" half-screen and 800x640 half-resolution, which again is pretty close to what the Fire actually delivers.)
So there’s no chance you could read two page spreads on the Fire, and you’d have to zoom for those – but to the extent that you can read two-page spreads on those other devices (and I can attest to 1280x800 and 1440x900 being easily doable), the Fire will work perfectly fine for reading a single page of comics.