Until a few weeks ago, Amazon was sure it had the top spot in the budget tablet market. Anyone looking to find a decent tablet without the huge price tag of the iPad would almost always go for the Kindle Fire, a 7" dual-core tablet priced at just $200. But then things started to change.
First, Microsoft announced that it would be coming out with the Microsoft Surface, a 7" tablet that would have many exotic features such as a bigger Windows Phone 7 OS (the icons stay the same size, but you see more of them), a stylus, and a clip-on keyboard. These features made the tablet a boom-or-bust, and right now most people are predicting bust, so Amazon wasn't unsettled at all.
Then, Google announced their Nexus 7. This was trying to be the iPad killer, but one thing for sure is that it will kill the Kindle Fire. At the same $200 cost, it has twice the cores, is much faster, has a sharper display and a nicer OS, a front facing camera, GPS, Bluetooth, and a much nicer feel. Amazon realized that they had to do something, or the Kindle Fire would soon be extinct.
Now, a set of reports from China Times and BGR have told us exactly what they are doing. Amazon plans to release the Kindle Fire 2 in July.
According to these reports, the Kindle Fire 2 will stay at the same price as the current Kindle Fire, but will undergo many updates. First, its processor will be upgraded to a quad-core one. Second, its screen probably expand to 8.9" or 10" (probably the latter). Third, it will have a new metal casing on the exterior instead of the current plastic one.
The thing that I like to hear most on this list is the bigger screen size. On the current 7" Kindle Fire, reading magazines becomes tough, because you can't read the text, so you either have to zoom in on the page and pan around to follow the text (ugh...) or go on text mode where it displays the text in the format that books are in (Where did the pics go?). On a 10" Kindle Fire, I'm expecting that you wouldn't have to zoom in on the text, as it would already be readable.
When will this Kindle Fire be available? Well, shipping of the components for this device began in June, which means that it should be announced some time in late July. Stay tuned.
