Friday, December 16, 2011

Next Amazon Kindle Fire tablet could come in a few months. Should you really buy the first version?

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Are you sure you want to rush out and buy that Kindle Fire tablet that Amazon is announcing tomorrow? According to some sleuthing by Ryan Block, co-founder of gdgt.com, you may be getting a slate that’s being rushed out to make the upcoming holiday shopping season — and that will be soon be replaced by a better version.

By now, you may know that the Kindle Fire appears to be based on the RIM PlayBook, which hasn’t exactly set the world on, er, fire. While that fact alone may not be big problem for Amazon shoppers — after all, it won’t be burdened with the idiosyncrasies Research in Motion baked into the PlayBook user experience — early adopters might want to know a few other things about how Kindle Fire v1.0 came to be.

According to Block, there were a few hiccups along the road. Amazon’s own Kindle product team wanted no part in developing the Fire, and some hardware issues have forced the company to use a slower processor than it would have liked to. His sources conclude that it’s “supposed to be pretty poor.”

Nonetheless, the Kindle Fire could work fine for many tablet buyers if the hardware performs decently, and the interface is usable enough (more on that here). But Block is now reporting that Amazon will be releasing another Kindle Fire in the first quarter of next year, and it’s the one about which the company is really excited. Why that is, we’re not sure, but it apparently is.

In other words, you just might want to save your tablet dollars for Kindle Fire 2 if you really desire Amazon’s best. That is, if you can bear the wait.

Sean Portnoy is a freelance technology journalist.


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