The Amazon Kindle Fire is one of the best-selling Android tablets around, even though it launched less than half a year ago and runs a highly customized version of Android. But Amazon isn’t likely to stand still in the tablet space.
Every few days there’s another rumor about the next Kindle Fire. Today’s come from Taiwanese news source CENS, which claims that Amazon will launch two new 7 inch tablets in 2012, along with an 8.9 inch Kindle Fire.
If true, it looks like we could see a low-cost model which may be similar to the current Kindle Fire as well as two additional models with premium features. CENS reports there will be:
- A 7 inch model with a 1024 x 600 pixel screen
- A 7 inch model with a 1280 x 800 pixel screen
- An 8.9 inch model with a 1920 x 1200 pixel screen
Amazon’s Kindle Fire doesn’t include the Google Play Store, instead featuring tight integration with the Amazon Appstore for Android and Amazon’s digital book, music, and movie services.
But basically it runs Android apps — so it makes sense that we’d see future models with 1280 x 800 pixel and 1920 x 1200 pixel displays. Those are the same screen resolutions we’re seeing from other Android tablets, so it’s likely that developers will write apps designed for those screen sizes.
Still, most of the tablets expected to launch this year with 1920 x 1200 pixel displays have 10.1 inch or larger screens. If Amazon is actually working on an 8.9 inch model with that screen resolution, it could have more pixels per inch than pretty much any other Android tablet.
via The Next Web
And what are the plans for NOOK?
I’m more interested in what NOOK has up its sleeve rather than Kindle.
Hmm, I kind of doubt this. You’d be going from a 16:9 to 16:10 screen, which means you have to look at the resolution of a lot of things that are designed specifically to fit the current Fire’s screen. It’s an interesting idea though. iOS doesn’t really use any sub-pixel font anti-aliasing, which is why the retina displays make such a big difference on those devices. Although i’m sure it’d help the Fire as well, Android uses a form of font-anti-aliasing which might render that less of an issue on those devices, which means that the premium 7″ system isn’t likely to be as much of a e-reader upgrade as the iPad New vs. iPad2, which given how limited the Fire is at running apps is really the only point, IMO. The larger tablet might be interesting… But my wife loves her Fire’s size as is, and doesn’t like my… Read more »
Those who would have gone for the Kindle DX might like the larger screen option. Though 8.9″ is still smaller than the iPad’s 9.7″ screen.
7″ though will likely be more popular as the better sweet spot between mobile and portable size. Being just big enough for some tablet use but not so big that it can’t still fit into a large pocket or carry bag. Along with being more comfortable for one handed reading.
On a side note, I’m sure a lot of the sub 10″ netbook owners are probably wondering if they could mod those screens into their old systems 😛
While others may be hoping for smaller versions of the Asus Transformer. Some people just like tiny gadgets ;-P
Only apps that are designed specifically for the Kindle Fire or some other 7inch 1024*600 device would have a problem with an aspect change. That would require not following sensible design guidelines and willful avoidance of using Android’s built-in scaling and resolution awareness.