Well, they did it. This is effective NOW and through Cyber Monday. $50 off the new Kindle Fire HD 2nd Gen with 16 GB (not 8) and the Kindle HDX 7" tablets.
Note that the $50 off the HDX tablets is for all storage levels of the WiFi model. (Updated to clarify this is for the straight WiFi models.)
ALL have Dolby Audio Dual Stereo Speakers and Dual band WiFi, while the HDX models have dual antennas also.
Normal starting prices are w/ special offers that they say will offer more savings than Lighting deals.
| Kindle Fire HD 7" - $139 Basic "family" tablet, HD Gen2 8 and 16GB options Display: 1280 x 800, 216 PPI Ram: 1GB No Mayday No camera or mic (no Skype) No HDMI-out: Use 'Fling' - Dual-core 1.5 GHz processor | Kindle Fire HDX 7" - $229 'Personal' HDX tablet 16, 32 or 64GB options Display: 1920 x 1200, 323 PPI Ram: 2GB Front-facing, 720p camera No HDMI-out: Use 'Fling' or Miracast Quad-core 2.2 GHz processor | Kindle Fire HDX 8.9" - $379 'Does it all' HDX tablet 16, 32, or 64GB options Display: 2560 x 1600, 339 PPI Ram: 2GB Adds 8MB rear-facing camera No HDMI-out: Use 'Fling' or Miracast Quad-core 2.2 GHz processor |
The image and table above are added so that you can see the current models and what each one has, to give you a head start on all the information at the product pages.
In fact, since you need to decide in short time, if interested in this $50 discount, here are MORE DETAILS that I put together earlier on the new feature enhancements on these two tablets -- they have thorough descriptions of what these tablets do:
1. Overview of New Features
2. Things to Know about the new features
Those two articles have clarifications for some points that have puzzled some.
Re this deal ending Monday night:
I'm just going to quote the press release here. Later, I may add a bit. Just got back and saw this had been announced over two hours ago...
Cyber Monday Starts Early—Amazon Announces Two Unprecedented Limited-Time Deals on Kindle Fire Tablets
$50 dollars off two of our most popular tablets
Kindle Fire HDX 7”—normally $229—now just $179
Breakthrough price now even lower—all-new Kindle Fire HD 16 GB now just $119
December 01, 2013 08:06 PM Eastern Standard Time
SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--(NASDAQ:AMZN)—Amazon today announced two special deals on Kindle Fire tablets. Starting now and through Cyber Monday, customers will receive $50 off two of our most popular Fire tablets: just $119 for the all-new Kindle Fire HD 16 GB, normally $169 (nearly 30% off); and just $179 for Kindle Fire HDX 7”, normally $229 (over 20% off). These deals are available on Amazon.com while supplies last. Customers can order Fire HD 16 GB [here] a
“The new Fire tablets are the best tablets we’ve ever built—the reviews from press and the feedback from customers has been overwhelmingly positive”
“The new Fire tablets are the best tablets we’ve ever built—the reviews from press and the feedback from customers has been overwhelmingly positive,” said Neil Lindsay, Vice President, Amazon Kindle. “We’re excited to be able to offer $50 off Kindle Fire HDX 7” and the all-new Kindle Fire HD 16GB for Cyber Monday.”
The new Kindle Fire HDX 7” features a stunning exclusive HDX display, a quad-core 2.2 GHz processor, twice the memory, and up to 11 hours of battery life, as well as exclusive new features like X-Ray for Music, Second Screen, Prime Instant Video downloads, and the revolutionary new Mayday button.
The all-new Kindle Fire HD includes an HD display, high-performance processor, dual speakers, exclusive features, and all the benefits of the Amazon ecosystem at a breakthrough price.
FWIW Fire HD2 does have support for Second Screen ('fling'). It's called out on the product description now (maybe it wasn't before). Not clear why it would not also support Miracast except that it has fewer cores and no MiMo to work with.
ReplyDeleteI am enjoying my new HD2. The reading app is much better than I'd expected. Nice to have TTS again, and that is so much better than it ever was on eInk Kindles. Bookmarks have been restored to usefulness (for the first time since Kindle 1). They have always been easy to create and delete but navigation to them (the whole point of bookmarks) has been problematic as they are mixed up with Annotations (on PW you can filter to show only Bookmarks in the View Notes and Marks list, which is a step in the right direction). Now they have their own navigation list for that. And Quick Switch is nice for those of us cycling between books (though can't use it from Home screen for some reason). I just discovered you can swipe from left edge to bring up Go To options (without tapping menu, then Go To menu icon). Sweet.
Hopefully they'll add popup footnotes and page flip. I miss having links to the book Description from the Books listing and when reading the book, and ability to select a title/author/subject in the text I'm reading. And I'd like to initiate a search of Kindle Store (why don't they want people searching the Kindle Store? but it was only belatedly added back to Paperwhite and Kindle Touch). It would be nice if they'd restore covers to the Documents listing (where applicable), and as ever with the Fire, figure out when a mobi file is downloading from the web browser and just put it in Documents directly instead of leaving that task to the bewildered user.
I haven't yet done any app side loading except for DropBox (dropbox.com has a helpful 'Kindle Fire' link to step you through the process). I think I'll be okay with just Mantano Reader, whatever Google apps work (Play Books, YouTube especially), and Puffin (for the occasional Flash situation).
I think my Paperwhite is going to be getting lonely.
Tom, yes.; On my October 1 blog entry on HDX/HD Tips: Things to know, I had this:
Delete=====
" TV-involved technology is very sophisticated, so I asked for clarification on whether it was included in the $139 basic Kindle HD 7"tablet.
The response: "Both Second Screen (coming later this month) and Miracast mirroring are available on all of the new tablets (including the $139 HD)."
=====
Those are questions commonly asked, so I have that blog entry linked at the top right of the reference info column. -- .It's/ just Skype stuff and HDMI-Out port that's missing.+ less RAM, storage space and a slower processor. It does support Miracast because all it needs is a dual band WiFi.
I do love the slow swipe from left with option-type screens and having a sort of Table of Contents available, and it's context sensitive too, which is another thing I like.
I think that the store is so easy to get to if WiFi is on and so fast, they prefer to have people looking at other books there so they might buy them :-) or take notes to do that someday. I don't know why Documents-listing is so ugly on my HDX - it's just a single vertical list, but it's very easy now to put stuff in Docs and then refresh the screen in ES File Explorer app to get them to show up, and of course mailing them to the Kindle makes it even easier.
I use WiFi Explorer to do it without cables or I email them to me as attachments and I download them in case I don't want them in the Cloud.
I agree that downloading mobi files to Docs direct would be so much better! but I suspect they're not focused on making non-Kindle books easier to deal with though they do allow emailing non-digital-rights-protected mobi books to our Cloud and that does allowa downloading them directly nto the right place easily..
I have both Mantano and Aldiko. They don't take that much room and I like the option of a different layout.
Youtube just works well now with Silk's Experimental Streaming Viewer. But I like Tubemate app for keeping favorite videos.and BS Player to play flv files as well as the more esoteric formats.
I love Google Maps and Street View and Google Earth of course. You've seen How to install Google Apps? No rooting, no mods. It's so simple now. People much prefer Dolphin browser's support of Flash to Puffin.
Sad to say my Paperwhite is lonely too. I like it for its lightness and having a low light glow in a movie theater while I'm waiting for a movie to start or on an airplane when others are sleeping. But it''s my 8.9" HDX I use now everywhere as it's so light and thin (and the Poetic case is so fine), and I love reading two little pages at a time in Landscape, using larger fonts. I can read faster that way. And it doesn't strain my eyes. Of course I'm a movie/video fan and subscribe to magazines.
-- The older 8.9" was so HEAVY (even the 7" HD 1 tho' I still love that one), and the lightness of the new line is amazing. As is the speed at which the HDX works with all the nifty tricks the programmers have done, tricks they put into your HD too. Glad you're enjoying it! Thank you for the update. I'll want to hear more about your experience - what you find etc.
Miracast is not mentioned on the product description, so I'm not so sure it is supported. But it is moot, we don't have HDTV to hook it to.
DeleteThe books I'm downloading are too big to send (>50MB). But now that I think about it I can upload them to my mostly unused Amazon Cloud storage. That is supposed to sync with the Fire. Probably does not back up annotations that way but worth a try. I didn't consider that before since Paperwhite doesn't use that.
As for Puffin vs Dolphin+Flash: Flash for Android is not getting updated, AIR for Android (which is what Puffin uses) is updated. And it is one thing to install instead of two. But I have little use for either, not a big deal to me which is 'better'.
DeleteTome - The Kindle Team was queried by PR and they said Miracast and 2nd screen are supported on the HD model, and the specs for Miracast are for what the device already has, so I don't see the prob.
Delete-- I have 3 HDTVs so am more moved to check with them but haven't gotten the adapter because I have the older KFires still with the HDMI out and there is zero lag time involved vs milliseconds that become noticeable with fast movement on the Miracast wireless setup.
Ah, good point, re 50MB+ books. Yes, we can upload directly there. They do intend to sync any personal book that is in the personal docs area. Annotations and highlights. It'e be a good test! I wad able to get into personal docs area with my very first Kindle Fire, as long as I had the right flash player at the time, for some reason! I could even view photos that way. But they did not intend direct use like that. NOW they have amazing displays of Cloud images that are not on your devices. It's so fast it's as if they ARE on the device. Just amazes me.
Gee, I like the nane 'Tome' for you, even if it was accidental!
Delete> As for Puffin vs Dolphin+Flash: Flash for Android is not getting updated,
But Adobe has been putting compatible Flash players up nevertheless, shown in the link I give to the Archives, which is now the source for flash player instead of XDA because the latter is now painful due to the guy's storage/sharing sites being infested with credit-card-demanding pages and showing porn-related stuff. There is one download link of 3 at that XDA-linked set of sites for the flash player that works to download his recommended file for Google Nexus (which works for the latest Nexus and also for KFire) but Adobe archives for flash player are free of such things so I link to them now for that file.
> AIR for Android (which is what Puffin uses) is updated. And it is one thing to install instead of two.
What I care most about is how it functions. Amazon Kindle Forum regulars who trade advice have had a hard time with Puffin and its Flash, while people love the ease of Dolphin's support for it which less prone to freezes and glitches, they say.
> But I have little use for either, not a big deal to me which is 'better'.
And a lot of us find ourselves on Flash sites too often (especially if interested in photo sites or sites using videos with different processes involved depending on how it's sent/streamed.
By better, I mean more reliable from all word of mouth I've read so far. One thing that helps is Dolphin's sub-menu choice for "User Agent" where you can choose to be seen as "desktop" instead of 'mobile' which gives you fewer restrictions and smoother use if your tablet is capable of it. Also, some sites are available to iPads but not to Android and there's a setting for iPad that has worked for some sites.
Are you using ezPDF? It has 'too many' features (showing,but you can get them not to show) so I sometimes use the more limited Adobe Reader :-) ... The formatting of some PDFs though with ezPDF is so nice! Let me know of any really good PDF readers you use and prefer.
My point about new Fire HD is that your comparison table up there makes it look like there is no video out, when in fact (I guess) it is the same as the HDX models.
DeleteI do think ezPDF is the best Android app for PDF, but I mostly use Adobe Reader these days. It works with free cloud storage on Acrobat.com, as does the iOS Reader and desktop Acrobat. So I can read and annotate on any of my devices. I don't remember if ezPDF creates 'real' PDF annotations (that can be read by Acrobat, Reader etc.). That's always been problematic with PDF readers generally if you need to participate in real PDF workflows. Again that argues for Adobe Reader, which keeps improving (though I wish you could do on-device cropping to better use smaller screens).
I have been playing with Amazon Cloud Drive as storage for Kindle files. What I'm coming to understand is that it is designed to sync 'documents' in the traditional sense, , i.e. PDF, TXT, DOC, HTML, and not personal documents in the Kindle sense. The Docs view on Fire OS 3.2 (or whatever the latest ones have) ignores files without those magic file extensions. Those will download and an app selector appears when you tap on the downloaded item (apps register for the file types they work with). Note that when viewing Cloud items, there is a By Folder option which shows the folders you have set up in ACD. But I guess they think nobody would want to use ACD for Kindle files when there is Personal Documents service. That's true except for the 50MB limit they have on that (I have a couple of 'hybrid' mobi files that are >200MB).
But there are 2 ways you can still use ACD for Kindle files: 1) store them 'as is' but use Silk to download them from your ACD web page. They download to /Downloads and then you have to move them to /Documents, same as when downloading mobi from any web site. 2) rename them on ACD to have one of the unfiltered file extensions, say TXT. Now they will show up in the Docs Cloud list and you can download them there. But ACD documents download to a rather obscure location, /sdcard/Android/data/com.amazon.zico/files/, and you have to peek into the gibberish-named folders to find the '.txt' file that is really your .mobi file (ES File Explorer has search but I haven't figured out how to use it that well). Now you rename the .txt to .mobi and move it to /Documents and you are done. Simple! not...
It is looking like 1) is the better option, with the bonus that it 'should' also work with Paperwhite, etc., over 3G too since it is amazon.com domain. But then I'm going to want to run these through kindlestrip so the download time is more reasonable (most of these are direct-from-publisher and are 'hybrid' mobi+kf8+source files, 3x bigger than needful).
I think there are Android apps that can do a bit of shell scripting. It would be nice to just push a button to copy .mobi files from /Downloads to /Documents
Ah, I see - though all the other ones also say No HDMI out. (Except the 8.9: HD from last year in one of the KF HD/HDX blog entriesl) "No Mayday" took up the room there, Naybe I'll add 'No Mayday' in the slot above it and mention Miracast/2ndScreen in the same place.
DeleteRe mobi files (also called "Kindle' files here, as non rights-protected Kindle format files), I've never used a mobi file over 50M and it's probably a rare thing, but yes, too awkward in the ways you describe.
File manager displays have to show 'storage/emulated/0/___ etc in the latest HDX/HD line and it's very confusing. So is the fact that personal document transfers into 'documents' folder don't show up in even ES File Explorer app unless you 'refresh' them when possible via an icon in the top right corner, which doesn't always seem to be there.
I like your idea of a one-button in an app ethat just *.lmobi move from /downloads to /documents, sort of the way Easy Installer just looks for *.apk files and shows them all to you and then you click to install the one yuou want.
.
Greetings- so I am confused. I would like to use my Kindle Fire HD 2nd generation with Miracast technology. However, the rep from Amazon told me tonight that I would have to buy a HDX model to have this capability and purchase an adapter for my smart TV to pick up the kindle on the network to launch the Miracast to stream movies from the Kindle HDX to my HD smart TV. Does anyone know if my kindle FIRE HD 7 2nd generation is enable to use the Miracast technology and what do I need to get this up and running?>
DeleteAnonymous, you're not alone in the confusion over Miracast. While I have a statement on file from Amazon that it was included in the $139 HD's planned features at the time they released these, it is not mentioned in the product page at this point -- only "Second Screen" and "Fling" features are. The "Learn More" button leads to a help page saying that Second Screen feature requires at least a Kindle fire 2nd Gen and that the Miracast feature requires an HDX.
DeleteYou have 30 days to get a no-questions-asked full refund on this model and you can then purchase an HDX instead (which I do recommend for its processor and other features...
Well! I'm searching about the Android Tablet PC then i come across your blog where i have found so many helpful article. I think It would be nice if they'd restore covers to the Documents listing (where applicable), and as ever with the Fire, figure out when a mobi file is downloading from the web browser and just put it in Documents directly instead of leaving that task to the bewildered user..... You have great collection which show the hard work and seriousness with this blog. keep it up.
ReplyDelete