Amazon announces Kindle Fire HD in 7″ and 8.9″ varieties, not coming to Australia

Amazon has just announced their follow up to the incredibly popular Kindle Fire. The new Kindle Fire HD is coming in two form factors, 7-inch and 8.9-inch, as well as a WiFi only and LTE capable variants.

As Amazon’s tablets run off of Amazon’s App Store and not Google Play, it means that they can only be available in countries that support the App Store. Australia, of course, is not one of the lucky ones. Before you keep on reading you must be aware that the Kindle Fire HD is not coming to Australia, for now.

• 8.9-inch 1920×1200 (254ppi) display
• HD front-facing camera
• HDMI output
• Bluetooth connectivity
• Texas Instruments OMAP 4470 processor
• 4G LTE variant
• wo antennas,
• WiFi in 16GB and 32GB variations, 4G LTE in 32GB or 64GB of storage

Amazon claims that that OMAP processor can outperform the Tegra 3, which is quite a statement. Based on initial impressions from American sites it appears that the processor is in fact quite snappy. More powerful than the Tegra 3 though? We’re not so sure about that just yet.

The 7-inch variant will be selling for $199 in the US ($50 cheaper than the Nexus 7) and the 8.9-inch will be priced from $299.

Anyway, the Kindle Fire HD tablets look to be quite powerful and have a whole lot packed in for their price. If you’re in the US then I’d definitely suggest checking one of these out as an alternative to the Nexus 7. But, of course, being an Australian I haven’t had a chance to check it out.

Source: The Verge