Amazon officially announces the Kindle Fire HD; coming November 20th starting at $199
Amazon’s just made another bombshell announcement. They look to be bringing an 8.9 inch Kindle Fire tablet called the Kindle Fire HD. This beast will sport a 1920×1200 resolution for starters, and there are a whole lot more things to like. It sports a dual-core TI OMAP 4470 processor to boot, has two antennas, weights 20 ounces and is just 8.8mm thin.
Other talking points include the inclusion of MIMO technology, which in conjunction with the dual antennas will supposedly bring us 41% faster performance than the iPad 3. This marks the first tablet to ever launch with MIMO technology, which uses dual channels to keep wireless signals “untangled.”
On the software side, Amazon has announced some new changes to Whispersync. It will allow you to listen to a book as an audiobook while you’re driving, then seamlessly continue where you left off in reading mode once you leave the car. Whispersync is also available to developers for saving progress in your game to the cloud.
For movies, the Kindle Fire HD will allow you to tap the screen and bring up actor/actress information of whoever you pressed. The information is fed to you through the world’s largest film database – IMDB.com.
A new Kindle FreeTime mode will allow you to set timers for your children to use certain content. You can limit the gaming time to one hour and let them read books all they want, for instance. And with multiple profiles you can set it up differently for each child you have.
All of this is headed our way starting November 20th, with the 7 inch 16GB variant starting at $199.99 and the 8.9 inch 16GB variant starting at $300. Oh, but wait — there’s more.
Amazon is also introducing the Kindle Fire HD 4G LTE. It’ll come with 32GB of storage and will done the 8.9 inch screen size. The 4G logo they used looked like AT&T’s so we imagine they will likely get it, though that’s not confirmation that no other 4G carriers would be getting it at some point down the line. It’s coming to Amazon’s site starting November 20th for $500.