Elements of the Kindle Fire
In the past, Amazon shipped its Kindle e-readers with half-baked, “experimental” elements such as their web browser and music player. These elements worked, but were cumbersome at best. Prior to the Kindle Fire, the focus of Kindle devices was really on reading. The essence of the device revolved around that fact that it was built to read. The E-Ink screen sans a back light was easy on the eyes, and the device was light in the hand with a month of battery life.
Amazon shipped the Kindle Fire with custom elements that are anything but half-baked. Take a look:
The Carousel
The Kindle Fire’s home screen is interactive simplicity. Coined the Carousel, all of your most recent apps, books, web pages, etc. are visible with a swipe of your finger. The Carousel consists of two “shelves”. The top shelf is your recent items while the lower shelf has your Favorites; the items you use most often can be placed here. Across the top of the Carousel are links to the Newsstand, Books, Music, Video, Docs, Apps, and the Web. Each of these launches their corresponding feature. Each section is split between the items on your device and the items saved in the Cloud on your Amazon account. Of course, there’s also a convenient link to the Amazon online store for each section as well.
Amazon Kindle Fire Carousel
Silk Browser
The Kindle Fire’s browser is a far cry from the “experimental” browser older Kindles have. Another custom build for the Fire and it’s Android Operating System, Silk is a fully functional web browser complete with the features you love about your computer browser including tabs, bookmarks, speed, history, and a customizable back end. Yes, you can clear you cache and history just like on your computer. Silk supports Flash and displays any web content with ease. The Kindle Fire’s multi-touch screen allows you to Zoom with easy gestures.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Pn9bjI00Uo
The Cloud
The Kindle Fire ships with 8GB of storage. Some users may find that amount of space lacking. Grant it, it’s not a lot. If you break it down, Amazon says that’s enough for 80 applications plus 10 movies, 800 songs, OR 6000 books. You can chop it up however you please. When you run out of space, that’s where Amazon’s Cloud Drive comes in. Amazon’s Cloud Drive isn’t exclusive to the Kindle Fire. Anyone with an Amazon account automatically gets 5GB of storage absolutely free. This service gives users secure access to all types of files; anything they upload to the space. Still not enough space? Well, Amazon has some fairly reasonable yearly rates to expand up to 1000GB or 1TB of room.
Amazon pulled out a lot of stops with the Kindle Fire. It really offers a lot of value for the money with a lot of freebies on the side. If you’re looking for a high performance device, Kindle Fire may not be your best choice, but if quality for price is your main concern, you really can’t go wrong with the Fire.
