Specifications for the Amazon Kindle Fire phone - or whatever they’ll end up calling it - have leaked. Photos of the phone have leaked as well, confirming suspicions had by several sources over the past few weeks, allowing us a peek at what may very well be a combination of elements able to give pause to iPhone users. Will you be one of them?
Notoriously accurate pre-release analyst Ming-Chi Kuo of KGI Securities has spoken up this week on the future of Amazon. This comes after dishing on Apple for several years, more often than not showing when products would be launching well before they were made official. This week Kuo suggests that the Amazon phone will launch in a timeframe between 3 and 6 months into the future.
College basketball fans look forward to March coming around all year so they can watch the big college basketball tournament. March Madness is one of the most popular months in basketball and if you can't be home to watch all the games on TV, you can watch them live from wherever you are on a mobile device. The March Madness Live app has been updated this year to support a new mobile platform.
With a codename like "Project Aria", we wouldn’t be surprised if Amazon was also trying to kick out the SEO of Motorola/Google’s Project Ara while they’re at it. This week it’s been tipped that Amazon’s long-rumored smartphone is part of talks between the company and potential OEM partners for overseas distribution. What we’re also to understand today is that "multiple" United States-based cellular carriers are already onboard with the idea.
In early October, Scribd launched an ebook service that competes with similar offerings from Oyster, Amazon, and such. Today it has expanded its battleground into Amazon's territory, making available an app for Kindle Fire users who want to utilize the Scribd library of content.
Amazon's Mayday system for the Kindle Fire HDX, putting a live customer services assistant on the screen of the Android-based tablet, saw the retailer beat its self-imposed time-to-answer target, though highlights lingering questions as to how many new owners needed hand-holding to understand the media-centric slate. Mayday, launched alongside the 7- and 8.9-inch Fire HDX models earlier this year, connects to remote tech support who can either guide users through setting up or troubleshooting their tablets, or take control and do the hard work themselves.
Amazon announced a new upgrade is coming to the Kindle FreeTime software ahead of Christmas. The Kindle FreeTime software is something that Amazon offers that allows parents to control how much time their child can spend on their Kindle tablet doing specific things. The FreeTime software can limit the overall time spent on the tablet, the time spent with games, and the time spent with video among other things.
This week the folks at Amazon have released the first big update to their mobile operating system since the new wave of Kindle devices in Fire OS 3.1. This version of the OS is - as always - based in Android, but modified to make itself wholly Amazon-friendly. This update brings on new deep integration with Goodreads, Second Screen, and Cloud Collections for starters.
The Kindle Fire HDX 8.9 is the second half of what Amazon hopes will be a one-two knockout punch to rival tablets, sliming down the last-gen Fire HD 8.9 and boosting speed and screen resolution in the process. As we found with the 7-inch Fire HDX, that can make for a compelling slate if you're already onboard with Amazon's ecosystem, but with a bigger price along with its bigger screen, does the 8.9-inch version hit the same sweet spot? Read on for the SlashGear review.
Amazon's Kindle Fire HDX 7-inch has begun shipping, the company's third-generation Android tablet, complete with Amazon's new remote support "Mayday" system that puts a real assistant at your fingertips. Priced from $229 for the 16GB, WiFi-only model, though also available with up to 64GB of storage and a choice of Verizon or AT&T LTE connectivity, the Kindle Fire HDX 7 has a higher-than-HD 1920 x 1200 display which uses a new dynamic screen system to boost not only brightness but contrast when used outside in direct sunlight.
Amazon and HTC are partnering on the rumored "Kindle smartphone", a new report suggests, with the struggling phone manufacturer in talks around building as many as three handsets for the retail behemoth. Of the trio of unnamed devices, one is "at an advanced stage of development" - potential the device believed to be codenamed "Smith" - the FT [registration required] reports, though is still unlikely to launch until 2014 assuming Amazon sticks with its current roadmap.
There's a collection of Amazon products on the way nearing the end of the year here in 2013, it would seem, with the winner for Most Likely to Appear First going to a trademark filing by the name of Amazon Firetube. This name will quite likely go to a product that'll take cues from Google's Chromecast, allowing quick and easy display mirroring from the Amazon Kindle Fire series - or the possible upcoming smartphone series - for your big-screen TV. The trademark filing, found by an intrepid tipster speaking with 9to5Google's Seth Weintraub, has appeared in both the United States and in Canada all at once.