Kindle Fire Hands On

Some lucky users managed to get the Kindle Fire a day early since Amazon decided to ship early for pre-order units. The following is a hands on experience of the device. The Fire is not the most exemplary device of its kind, but has enough to be a clear leader in the eReader market.

The Kindle Fire is much thicker and heavier than its Apple counterpart; however it has a seven inch screen with a 16:10 ratio. There is nothing on the side edges, but the top and the bottom have all the necessary points that you need – a Micro USB slot, a headphone jack and a power button that lights up when pressed. When you do start the Kindle, a refreshing user interface greets you, with stylish pointing arrows giving you a guided tour of the device. The background too is very welcoming and youthful. There is, what experts say, a ‘carousel’ of recently used/viewed applications that appears to be quite amazing.

The screen, however, can get over responsive to swipes and taps. The brightness is commendable and the high resolution gives you a brilliant feeling of detail in reading anything. The four default shortcuts that the Kindle Fire comes with are – the Amazon store, the Pulse news application, and dedicated shortcut keys to IMDb and Facebook.

When you navigate away from the home screen, Android will give you the four default keys in the bottom (back, home, menu, and search). The home button will be isolated to the bottom left corner. If a book is being read, the font size button will always appear. Similarly, if you use the web, the bookmarks option will be present at all times.

The keyboard that the Kindle Fire carries is of a peculiar type, although it seems to be fairly decent when used. This keyboard is larger than that of a smart phone, but smaller than that of the iPad. Overall, the Kindle Fire is a decent bump over the previous iteration and offers enough to have the potential to take Amazon’s eReader line to new heights, the Kindle Touch notwithstanding.