Amazon announces Kindle Fire HD starting at $199, original tablet drops to $159
Amazon (AMZN) on Wednesday announced sequels to its popular Kindle Fire tablet, dubbed the Kindle Fire HD. The new tablet line will feature a 7-inch or an 8.9-inch display with a resolution of 1920 x 1200 pixels. The 8.9-inch Kindle Fire HD will sell for $299 and start shipping on November 20th. The smaller version of the Kindle Fire HD with a 7-inch screen will start at $199 and will ship on September 14th.
The 8.9-inch version of the tablet measures in at just 8.8 millimeters thin and weighs 20 ounces, and it features a TI OMAP 4470 processor. The device will also feature two separate Wi-Fi antennas that run on both the less-used 5GHz band and on the standard 2.4GHz band to maximize data efficiency. Most importantly, the 8.9-inch Kindle Fire HD will be the first version of the tablet to feature a front-facing HD camera that can be used to make video calls on a customized Skype app.
Both versions of the Kindle Fire HD will start with 16GB of storage, as Amazon has decided that its previous 8GB models didn’t provide enough space for users to store their content.
Amazon also announced that it has produced an upgraded version of its original 7-inch Kindle Fire that will sell for just $159 and will come with double its original RAM, a faster processor and a longer battery life. Finally, the company added a 4G LTE-enabled version of the 8.9-inch Kindle Fire HD that will sell for $499.
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