Amazon’s Move To Release A $50 Tablet

Amazon is preparing to hit tablet market this holiday season with a $50 device that has a 6 inch screen. That's half the price of the company's current 6-inch Fire HD tablet, and even less expensive than the company's Kindle reader, which starts at $79.

The current 6 inch Fire HD tablet is one of the cheapest tablets worth buying, and while the idea of an even cheaper tablet sounds wild. There are no specs yet but WSJ suggests the new $50 device will test the limits of cost savings.

Amazon could also be exploring other ways to make the $50 target price possible. The company's current Fire HD tablets may be as cheap as they are because of lock screen ads, and Amazon could expand ads like those to reach the $50 mark.

We'll be sure to keep you posted as more detail become available. What's your thoughts? Comment below...

Source: The Wall Street Journal

Kindle Fire Silk Browser Ported To Work On Other Android Devices

The Kindle Fire entered the fast-flooding and highly competitive tablet space last year like a breath of fresh air, and has settled down admirably in its own niche, holding out extremely well against the likes of the Ipad 2, the much touted Motorola Xoom, the Samsung Galaxy Tab/s & the Asus Transformer, despite running Gingerbread, which was considered a step behind at the time. With its $199 price, and the features it offered, it was always a great device for those who wanted a tablet only for the things that a tablet could do really well, and the Kindle Fire has proved that it was a worthy choice.

Apart from the price, one of the notable features that has gathered interest around this nifty device, is the in-built web browser that it comes with, called Silk. Silk has a different approach towards loading web pages, basically meaning that pages that you regularly visit tend to load faster, by accessing information from Amazon’s massive cloud-based servers, effectively providing a more fluid experience to the user.

After a lot of testing and research, XDA member TyHi has finally managed to create a working port of Silk, which can be used on other Android devices; phones or tablets likewise.

You can download the pack from here.

You can follow the development thread here, and read comments by people who have tried this out. For most people, it seems to work fine. I, for sure, am going to try this out first thing tomorrow.

Below are the installation steps quoted from the developer’s thread (link above):

1. Download the pack Here
2. Use Root Explorer to copy the lib files to /system/lib set permissions the same as the others.
3. Install all of the .apks like you would side load.
4. Copy the silk apk from /data/app to /system/app
5. Reboot and enjoy

Amazon promises Kindle Fire update coming soon

Amazon’s Kindle Fire is flying off the shelves, with some estimating Amazon will have shipped nearly 5 million units by the end of the year. With a souped up 10-inch model reportedly in the works, it is clear Amazon recognizes the importance of the exponentially growing tablet market, and has been the only tablet that has put a dent in the iPad2′s market dominance, thanks primarily to the $199 price tag.

If you read through the reviews of the Kindle Fire, you’ll likely have noticed the one major drawback to the Fire. Even though the device has a dual-core processor that rivals those found in far-pricier tablets, the Kindle UI Android 2.3 overlay slows down performance on the device, with several users reporting much more lag than one would expect from a current generation tablet.

Amazon recognizes the problem, and has promised an over-the-air update within the next two weeks to fix this and other bugs users have been reporting. The update will provide:

• Performance improvements
• Improvements in multi-touch navigation
• Allows the user to edit the list of items that show what users have recently been doing (so you can hide your navigation history from prying eyes)

Kindle Fire owners should be seeing this update hit their devices over the next few weeks, just in time for the holidays.