Amazon Launches Kindle Fire HDX Tablets

New submitter casab1anca writes "In classic Amazon fashion, without much fanfare, a bunch of new tablets just popped up on their homepage today. The new range, dubbed HDX, is available in the usual 8.9" and 7" versions, with improved hardware and software, but perhaps equally interesting is the revamped 7" Fire HD from last year, which goes for just $139 now." Compared to the Kindle Fire HD, the new models feature a jump in display density (216 PPI to 323 PPI for the 7" and 254 to 339 PPI for the 9"), a switch from a dual-core TI OMAP Cortex-A9 (at 1.2/1.5GHz) to a quad-core 2.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon, and a bump from 1G to 2G of RAM. On the software side, Android has been upgraded from 4.0 to 4.2.2 and Amazon added a few new features to their applications. Businessweek has an interview with Jeff Bezos running today too (starting a bit down the first page).

Re:Screen resolution

[Russ1642]

They can't because people are still on Windows, which heavily depends on bitmaps. If you increase the screen resolution that much it screws up lots of existing applications to the point of being unusable.

Re:bootloader still locked?

[geekoid]

Is it safe to assume you don't own a microwave, TV, and car becasue there not easy to change the boot?

Re:Google Play Store

[Archangel Michael]

You can. You just can't do it without sideloading the Play Store App. It does require gaining "root", in order to sideload the play store APP.

This alone should cause the"average" user to balk at Kindle anything. If you look at any other Android Tablet, and find one that uses Play Store, then you can add the Kindle App to it, and it becomes essentially the same thing (all other spec being the same).

Re:bootloader still locked?

[coinreturn]

And it's priced accordingly. Amazon is willing to accept meager profit on hardware under the assumption you will buy software from them. It's like the wireless providers subsidizing phone prices, except the contract never ends.