And that’s the advantage they have over Apple. Apple would be selling this thing for a minimum of $300.
If Amazon can deliver the larger Kindle Fire for $299 that will put some real pressure on iPad sales. I’d have to think that Apple would need to find a way to sell an iPad for $399.
What do you believe will be different with ICS? They’re not using the standard Android UI, so that won’t change. They’re not using the standard Android browser, so that won’t change. They’re not using standard Android mail, maps, or market, so none of that will change, either.
Amazon could tell you right now that it was based on ICS, and you’d have no way to know if they were telling the truth short of writing apps targeting ICS-exclusive APIs.
You don’t think that the gpu acceleration is going to help at all? You know as well as I do that android 2.3 is shit for what they are trying to do with it.
I’m honestly not sure what difference it’ll make. I mean, just because the default UI is capable of being GPU-accelerated doesn’t mean that Amazon’s Kindle-specific UI would be (or isn’t today), you know? That carousel thing is hardly a standard Android UI element.
Some handy reading on graphics acceleration and Android (available in 3.0 and beyond), for the technically inclined.
It’s pretty funny the way any attempt to visit the market.android.com in the Fire web browser sends you to the Amazon app store instead.
The tale of the tape.
Ultimately, this is a pretty tight race between the two devices.
The race might be close in quality, but I doubt it’s a tight race in practice. Everyone knows what a Kindle is and it will no doubt be selling worldwide soon. Does anyone (outside of geeks) really know what the Nook is?
I don’t think anyone is doubting which device will have more sales. That’s not really the point of the article.
Also, I can absolutely guarantee that the primary audience of the Nook (Touch, Color, or Tablet) is NOT geeks. The data shows a much older audience buying it expressly for book reading.
To anyone who actually has one and says web browsing sucks.
What are you experiencing? Mine is working great for web browsing.
So far really digging it except for the mail thing. Even that free mail app isn’t that good. I consider my ipad the best email reading device I have. Wish the fire was even close.
The Nook’s sold well and anyone who goes into a B&N will see one. Not that I think it will outsell the Kindle, but I suspect a lot of people will buy one.
I’m curious. I’d have no interest in connecting to an exchange account on it, only gmail. Does the Fire have Google’s Gmail app?
Not without hacking. Gmail is only on Android market.
When you say hacking, do you mean the whole rooting thing or do you mean turning on the setting to allow other programs and side loading the Gmail program package? The former I’m not willing to do, but the latter is fine.
You don’t need to root the device; but you do need to get the GMail apk, which technically you can only really get from the Market. But there were instructions upthread for how to transfer it over from your phone, or you can download it off dubious sites that I wouldn’t use, &c. So the “hacking” consists of figuring out how to get the GMail app itself when you can’t just pull it off the market.
For a more complete mail/calendar/contacts/tasks exchange client, I’ve been trying out Touchdown:
http://www.nitrodesk.com/fire.aspx
Seems to work pretty good. There’s a 30 day trial and it is $9.99.
The initial price is overrated for subsidized smartphones. Big deal if you get one for $99 vs $199. They still will cost the same per month for 2 years which now is in the $70-$80 range. Add up 2 years of that and the sell price is minor. I don’t know why anybody would not get the latest/greatest smartphone they can since there stuck for 2 years with it.
I find it odd that I like the kindle app on my ipad more than I like the kindle part of my fire.
I wonder how many of the Fire’s performance problems are complete software problems. When it came out, Amazon updated the Amazon Appstore app, and I updated it on my phone, and since then, that app has been horrible. I get those same “no response to some touches” problems that people talk about when they talk about the Fire – but only in the Amazon Appstore app. If my whole phone worked like that app, I’d think it was hideously slow and underpowered; instead I know it’s just a weirdly unresponsive app.