September is shaping up to be the month for mobile announcements! Amazon is the latest to announce their new mobile-wares. The Kindle is now available as Fire for $159, Fire HD for $199, Fire HD 8.9 for $299 and the Fire HD 8.9 4G LTE for $499. Each model comes in a 16GB or 32GB model, except the 4G which has a 32GB and 64GB version.
The range and price of these devices aren’t the only thing to get excited about. Amazon has added Dolby Audio on the HD versions, along with faster dual-band WiFi. Powered by a dual-core processor (1.5 GHz on the 8.9" models, and 1.2 on the base HD version) and an impressive 1920×1200 display (1280×800 on the base HD). Amazon also bundled lots of goodies like free unlimited cloud storage for all your Amazon content!
Amazon has done a great job on the features and hardware specifications of their new lineup. But perhaps the biggest news of the announcement was the new data plan that they have worked out for use with the Kindle Fire HD 4G LTE. The plan is priced yearly at $50. For that you get 250MB a month or data, along with 20GB of storage on Amazon’s cloud and a $10 App store credit. Yes, 250MB isn’t a whole lot of data each month – especially when you’re streaming movies and whatnot. But when you break it down per month, 250MB for just over $4 a month is really pretty good. Try and use WiFi for any streaming, and keep the data plan for email and book downloads when you’re out and about. Who knows, Amazon may just have a higher price point that offers more data usage per month.
The hardware is nice, and it’s priced right for consumers. Add to that one of the most affordable data plan that I’ve seen, and Amazon could have a real winner on it’s hands. I wonder if Microsoft and Apple are paying attention?
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