Amazon’s Kindle Tablet: Details revealed

Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Features, Handhelds, Rumors

MG over at TechCrunch got to spend some time playing with Amazon's upcoming Kindle Tablet, and has reported back with a bunch of impressions that have us excited for what's to come. There are no pictures of the device, as that was a condition of him being able to even experience the new Kindle to begin with, but MG paints a nice picture for us of what we are guessing will be the hottest tablet this holiday season that isn't named "iPad 2." For starters, it's an Android tablet, but Amazon has forked Android and has completely overtaken the UI, so it won't look or feel like the typical Android software. The book reader app is similar to what you'd find on iOS and Android, but this Kindle is more than just books--it brings Amazon's entire ecosystem to your hands. That means you get the books, Amazon Cloud Player for music, Amazon Video on Demand for television and movies, access to the Amazon storefront, etc. It even appears that Amazon will be giving purchasers of the tablet a free subscription to Amazon Prime, which itself costs $79 per year.

As for the hardware, we are talking about a 7-inch capacitive touchscreen tablet that supports two-finger multi-touch (the iPad supports 10 fingers, for comparison sake,) runs on a single-core processor, and includes 6 GB of onboard storage. Expect Amazon's cloud to play a huge factor in the storage area. It's said to look very similar to the Blackberry PlayBook, with no physical buttons on the front, no camera, and a rubberized back.

The expectation is that the Kindle Tablet will go on sale in November for $249, and if that's the case, this thing will fly off of Amazon shelves.