10-inch Amazon Kindle Fire Tablet Leaked, Shows Revamped Fire OS
Amazon produces quite a few tablet that it markets under the “Kindle Fire” brand. The online retailer has produced tablets in the 6-inch, 7-inch, and 8.9-inch size classes and seemed to be content with those offerings. Well, that is about to change, and we have mobile devices leaker Evan Blass to thank for giving us a sneak peak.
The leak shows that Amazon is finally pushing past the 8.9-inch form-factor with the impending release of its first 10-inch tablet. There’s not much to go on from the renders which show the back and the front of the device, but we do see what looks a basic, almost generic-looking tablet with rear- and front-mounted cameras. It also appears that the volume button and the volume up/down buttons have migrated to the top of the device.
We can also see what looks to be yet another revamp of Amazon’s Fire OS, which this time around looks to take a bit more from the underlying Android OS including a prominent Search box at the top of the screen and persistent navigational controls at the bottom. Overall, it’s a cleaner look than the current version of Fire OS (v4.5.5).
The new 10-inch Kindle Fire, which we assume will become Amazon’s new tablet flagship, will be joined at the low-end by a $50 6-inch tablet. Although we don’t have many details on this particular entry into the tablet market, we’d reckon that it’d have to be pretty barebones as far as specs go (the current $79 Kindle Fire HD 6 already scrapes the bottom of the barrel with a 1280x800 display and a 1.5GHz quad-core processor. Who knows how stingy Amazon is willing to be with the specs (or how many ads it will load the device up with) to hit that $50 price point.
Amazon is looking to be all things to all people by broadening its tablet range, so we’ll see if this translates into success given the fact that consumers have increasingly given the cold shoulder to tablets in recent quarters.
