Amazon Cuts Kindle Fire Price

The price war is now heating up, with Amazon joining the war. The price of Amazon Kindle Fire are dropping.


The Kindle Fire HD 8.9 inch Wi-Fi tablet will now be priced at $269 in the US, down from $299. The 4G wireless version now starts at $399, compared with $499 before, Amazon said.

Source: LiveMint

Hmm, Amazon Kindle Fire is now looking good.

Cheap Good Chinese Tablet PC Chuwi V99

Good news for us! Chinese manufacturers are being pushed by the recent release of Google Nexus 7 and Amazon Kindle Fire HD. For a long time Chinese built tablets, with their generic named tablets have long ruled the cheap good tablet pc market. They are of various built quality, from poor to decent. Now it looks like we will have a good tablet with Chuwi V99 Android tablet.

Chinese tablet manufacturer Chuwi has now launched a new retina-display equipped tablet, dubbed the Chuwi v99. The 9.7″ slate is equipped with a display sporting a resolution of 2048 x 1536, the same as Apple’s new iPad, but is  priced under $300. The Chuwi v99 is  powered by a 1.6 GHz Rockchip RK3066 ARM Cortex-A9 dual core processor, coupled with 1GB of RAM, and equipped with the Mali 400 GPU, 16GB of internal storage, microSD card slots for additional memory, a whopping 10000 mAh battery, and Android 4.1 Jelly Bean on board. Impressive, eh? And all that for under $300. 

Source: The Android Soul

The Chuwi V99 will come with Android 4.1, a great improvement. Most Chinese tablet comes equipped with Android 2.3 Gingerbread, built for smartphone small screen. Very poor choice, considering the screen size difference, making apps looks stretched out.

There is no release date yet. Wait we must.

I leave you with a first look video of the Chuwi V99 below.


Source: Youtube

Amazon Kindle Fire HD caught in the crossfire

Amazon recently announced the availability of Kindle Fire HD. Its latest version of Kindle tablet optimized for Amazon experience. It is a 7-inch tablet and received great review from people who like to read e-books and watch movies on their tablet. Amazon Kindle Fire HD is now in the crossfire between Google Nexus 7 and the recently announced iPad Mini. Can it stand out ?

For those of you not familiar with Kindle Fire HD, I found a great first impression you can read below :

The Fire HD is a well built tablet, and the rubberised back and surround make it feel more durable than an iPad.  

Switch it on, and the 7 inch screen is sharp, clear and easy to read. 

However, the main difference is in the software. 

The Kindle software puts content, not apps first. 

It works using a 'carousel' you scroll through with a finger, with content divided into books, music, apps, video and others. 

It's extremely simple to get around, but does feel far more 'contained' that the rivals from Google and Apple - this is a gadget for consuming media rather than any attempt to work. 

Sadly, the app selection is also smaller than its rivals, with 50,000 available.  

However, there are still most of the big names in there (including the MailOnline app), and the web browser also works well. 

For app addicts, this probably isn't the right tablet.  

But for those who primarily want a gadget to read and watch films on, the Fire HD is an absolute bargain, and it's only real competition in the budget market comes from Google's Nexus 7, which runs the firm's Android software and has more apps, but a much more complex interface. 

Overall, the Fire HD is a winner and could see many people switching from dedicated ebooks into the world of tablets - and the lower price may even lure a few iPad mini purchasers to switch allegiance.

Source: Daily Mail 

 The best way to find out who has the best hardware is by side by side comparison. Here is a feature chart comparing the Kindle Fire HD, Google Nexus 7 and iPad Mini that I found on the internet:

Another clear advantage for the iPad mini is its cellular connectivity—it'll be able to access 4G LTE mobile networks, while the Nexus 7 and Kindle Fire HD are currently Wi-Fi-only (there's the 8.9-inch LTE-enabled Kindle Fire HD, but it's a bit too big to make this comparison). Still, the two Android based tablets have their advantages in overall connectivity. The Nexus 7 has NFC and GPS, which are missing in the Fire HD, while the iPad mini is missing NFC entirely and only offers GPS in its cellular models. The Fire HD is also the only one of the bunch with micro HDMI out, making it easy to hook up to any HDTV.

Source: PC Magazine 

As PC Magazine summed up, in comparison, the three tablets appears to be similar. It is the connectivity that differentiate the tablets the most, with Kindle Fire HD having the advantage of easy connection to HD TV, watching movies on big screen TV using Kindle Fire is easy to do. Price is also great. It is cheaper than the iPad Mini. Equipped with Android 4.0, albeit heavily customized for Amazon experience. The Amazon Kindle Fire HD is still a contender. However with Google announcing its latest Android updates, both in terms of software and hardware, will Kindle Fire HD still be relevant ? What do you think ? Please share your comment below.