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KindleFire1

This week'south tablet and smartphone news has been largely dominated by Apple and iOS 9, just Amazon is bidding fair to alter that with a new, ultra-low-toll Fire tablet. The e-commerce giant was arguably the outset manufacturer to successfully challenge Apple in the tablet marketplace with its 2022 Kindle Burn down, and it's connected to push device costs downwards without compromising performance. Today, with the Burn down Tablet, Amazon is pushing its price points well into ii-digit territory.

Whether or not that'southward a good deal, of grade, depends on your hardware needs. Amazon's basic comparing chart is below:

FireComparison

Sources indicate that the SoC inside the Fire is a MediaTek MT8127. That's a quad-core, Cortex-A7 CPU clocked at ane.3GHz with an ARM Mali-450 MP4 GPU, 1GB of RAM, hardware support for H.265 playback, and 1080p H.264 back up baked-in as well. The screen resolution should be serviceable, given the device'southward small size, only it's not going to clock in as Retina-class. If yous're hoping for an ultra-cheap mobile gaming platform, nosotros'd recommend looking to a different tablet — the Mali-450 MP4 has been on the market for several years at this point and volition be thoroughly outclassed by any mod SoC.

NewFire

'dem bezels.

Then again, this tablet costs $50. it was simply five years ago that a $99 Maylong tablet of roughly this size got the tech world buzzing — right upwards until people actually tried information technology. When Amazon introduced the original Kindle Burn in 2022, information technology was hailed as a groundbreaking "cheap" tablet, despite debuting at $199. The CPU and GPU specs on the new Burn are stronger than either the debut Kindle Burn down or the 2022 refresh, its cameras are improve, and it weighs less. Toss in the fact that it's also 1/4 the price of its ancestor, and you've got a strong combination for the right kind of heir-apparent. The visitor claims up to seven hours of bombardment life, reviews will probable come in a bit under that mark. Expandable storage is available via microSD slot.

Plugging you into the Amazon economic system

Amazon is so certain that yous'll love the $50 Burn down, it's offer to sell them in six-packs of $250. That works out to $41 per device or, if you lot prefer the sales pitch, "Buy 5 tablets and get the sixth one free." Nobody else is crazy plenty to endeavor a stunt similar that — though to be fair, nobody else sells a tablet people might plausibly want to own for $50, either. The bespeak of Amazon selling an ultra-low-toll tablet is to hook yous on all the things you can impulse-buy with a $50 Amazon tablet. It's the razors-and-shaving blades model for the modern era, except instead of selling yous razors at roughly half the toll of aureate, Amazon will sell you Television shows, movies, ebooks, and other goods, both existent-world and digital, for diverse amounts of money.

Dissimilar Apple, which earns billions of dollars on hardware sales, Amazon has no smashing interest in making money off Burn itself. Fire, Burn Hard disk drive, and Fire HDX, are all designed to encourage customers to purchase Amazon Prime subscriptions. According to the visitor, Amazon Prime number customers spend nearly 2x more at Amazon than non-Prime customers. Research past Consumer Intelligence Review Partners, conducted early in 2022, showed that Prime customers bought an average of $1500 per twelvemonth, compared to non-Prime number customers, who spent $627.

From Amazon'south perspective, putting a $50 tablet in equally many easily as possible makes a great deal of sense. If that tablet drives $51 in additional sales throughout the year, whether for content or physical appurtenances, then it'll be a net acquirement gain for the company. Granted, Amazon won't make a net profit if a $50 device only generates $51 in sales — only Amazon has never been virtually turning a turn a profit in the starting time place.

The Fire Phone wasn't discussed at all in today's announcements, implying that the project is well and truly dead.