First look at Amazon Kindle Fire

BANGALORE, INDIA: Amazon's new $199 Kindle tablet, launched on Thursday, is creating ripples in the tablet world, especially among the likes of Apple, Samsung, Motorola, Asustek, HTC and LG Electronics.

Let us see what does the new Amazon tablet, expected to hit store shelves on November 15, 2011, bring to the table.

Also Read: India media tablet market emerges: Study

Dubbed, Kindle Fire, the 7" {7.5" x 4.7" x 0.45" (190 mm x 120 mm x 11.4 mm)> multi-touch display tablet is less than half the price of the iPad.

It boasts of IPS (in-plane switching) technology, similar to that used on the iPad, and comes with 1024 x 600 pixel resolution at 169 ppi, 16 million colours.

The Fire "supports public and private Wi-Fi networks or hotspots that use the 802.11b, 802.11g, 802.11n, or 802.1X standard with support for WEP, WPA and WPA2 security using password authentication; does not support connecting to ad-hoc (or peer-to-peer) Wi-Fi networks."

It also sports .5 mm stereo audio jack, top-mounted stereo speakers and a dual-core processor.

Though the Kindle Fire comes with a mere 8GB internal memory, Amazon is giving off free cloud storage for all Amazon content in its tablet.

The tablet also features Amazon Silk, a cloud-accelerated browser that uses a "split browser" architecture to leaverage Amazon Web Services cloud.

Users can also stream music library from Amazon Cloud Drive or use songs in Amazon MP3 Store using the tablet.