Amazon Kindle Fire HDX Tablets: Features And Release Dates

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Amazon announced its new Kindle Fire HDX tablet line up running on Amazon’s customised Fire 3.0 OS UI based on Android Jelly Bean. Company showcased two tablets which come in 7 and 8.9 inch screen sizes. These tablets support a first ever online video Tech support from Amazon at any time and they have named this feature as “MAYDAY”.Amazon announces new Kindle Fire HDX Tablets

Both the tablets are powered by 2.2 GHz Snapdragon 800 processor with 2GB of RAM. Both the tablets are offered in 16/32/64GB storage variants. Amazon claims that both the tablets can run for 11 hours with mixed usage.

Kindle Fire HDX 7-inch

Amazon Kindle Fire HDX 7 inch

Kindle Fire HDX 7-inch as a screen resolution of 1920 X 1200 pixels (323 PPI) which is equal to that of Google Nexus 7. This model is about 303gm in weight and has 8mm of thickness. This tablet has HD camera at front of unknown pixels. 16GB Wi-Fi only model comes with a price tag of $229.

Kindle Fire HDX 8.9 inch

Amazon new Kindle Fire HDX 8.9 inch

As compared to 7-inch tablet 8.9 inch model comes with a higher screen resolution of 2560 X 1600 pixels which makes up pixel density of 339PPI. This model has weight of 374gm and thickness of 8mm. 8-inch model comes with both front and rear facing HD cameras where rear camera is of 8 Mega Pixels. This model is priced at $379 for 16GB Wi-Fi only model.

Availability

As far as the availability of the tablets is concerned, 16GB Wi-Fi only model of 8.9-inch tablet will ship from November 7Th and 16GB 4G LTE model will go on sale from November 14th. 16GB Wi-Fi only variant of 7-inch tablet will go on sale by October 2nd. You can pre-order both the tablets from today.

Sony Announces Xperia Z: A Waterproof Galaxy S3 Killer

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Sony’s new flagship Android device is here! The company introduced its latest Xperia device at Sony’s CES press conference yesterday. Taking a look at the feature, it can surely be termed as a rival to Samsung Galaxy S3 and iPhone 5. The new smartphone comes with some incredible features like 1080p reality display, 13-megapixel camera and is water-resistant. It’s not really a phone that you can take with you when you are swimming but it surely is going to survive if you spill a bottle of water on it.

Sony Xperia Z Waterproof

5-inch Screen and 13-MP Camera

The big 5-inch screen is capable of showing full-1080p “reality” display. The smartphone also features a quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro processor to provide smooth Jelly Bean performance and a 13-megapixel camera packed with Sony’s latest Exmor RS sensor. Sony used their Exmor RS sensor for the first time in a smartphone and we are expecting to see improved low-light performance. The front-facing camera also comes with Exmor R sensor.

Once you are done recording or capturing pictures, you can see them in its 5-inch TFT Reality Display that packs the Bravia Mobile Engine 2 for augmenting colors and contrast on the clips. So, if you are thinking about watching movies or your recorded video clips, you are going to love the sharp display at 443 ppi. And the best thing here is, the smartphone is only 7.9 millimeters thick.

Sony UI

The latest flagship device by Sony features a lightweight Sony UI. All the ugly widget animations we saw before in previous Xperia devices are now slightly better and the company is not even going to name the UI.

Battery Life

Sony didn’t reveal much about the smartphone’s battery life in the press conference but there is a feature to improve its standby time called “stamina” mode. This mode can automatically shut down all your battery-draining apps and can also bring them back when you turn on your screen. When the mode is active, the standard calling feature and SMS is the only thing that will work.

Operating System and Other Features

The smartphone will be packed with Android 4.1 Jelly Bean (not the upcoming Android 4.2 version). However, the company will offer upgrades to 4.2 later. It also features 2GB RAM and the latest NFC (near-field communication) technology. Using the near-field communication technology, users will be able to send music to speaker, share audio or video files with other NFC supported devices and much more.

Summary of features:

  • 1.5 GHz  quad-core processor
  • 1080p HD 5-inch display
  • HDR Video recording
  • OS: Android 4.1
  • 13.1MP main camera, 2.2MP front-facing camera
  • 4G/LTE
  • 2GB RAM
  • NFC
  • Water and dust resistant
  • Dimensions: 139 x 71 x 7.9mm
  • Up to 16GB Memory; expandable up to 32GB

Availability

We still don’t have any specific U.S. release date or any data about carrier or price yet. But we do know that Sony is thinking about a global launch in the first quarter of 2013. Looks like we have to wait for a rumor, leaked specs or the global launch to know more about the device.

Google Drive, the DropBox killer, set to launch in April’12?

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Market is abuzz with rumors again. Rumor that has been circulating like a sinusoidal wave since 2006. The rumor about Google Drive, an online (now cloud) storage service from Internet’s big daddy Google. And it seems, like Google Plus, GDrive will also see herds of people trying to get an invite to Google Drive.

According to Om Malik of GigaOm, Google Drive could arrive as soon as April’12.Om sighted on behalf of his sources the following:

According to the details from my sources, Google is going to offer 1 Gb of storage space for free, but will charge for more storage. The market leader Dropbox currently offers 2 Gb for free. Google’s product will come with a local client and the web interface will look much like the Google Docs interface. Interestingly, it will launch for Google Apps customers and will be domain specific as well. Google has also built an API for third party apps with this service so folks can store content from other apps in the Google drive. My sources are impressed, so far with what they have seen.

So, does it mean Dropbox successful run comes to an end? Who can say? Facebook is very much alive and kicking asses despite of Google Plus, Buzz, Wave and Orkut (All Google products). But it for sure mean competition for Dropbox and Box. We certainly don’t consider Microsoft’s SkyDrive a contender here. What do you think, will it be a game changer?