Kindle Fire unboxing video and overview writeup

If you've read my other blog posts on Amazon's Kindle line of e-readers it should be no surprise that I'm a big fan.
The Kindle Fire is Amazon's very affordable entry into the tablet market, primarily as Amazon content consumption device. A brilliant bit of marketing if you ask me. Content purchased from Amazon such as Kindle e-books, digital music in Amazon's cloud music player, instant video and apps from their own app store, is all available on the device.
Their WhispherSync technology keeps all your devices and content in sync. So if you are in the middle of watching an episode of Breaking Bad on the Kindle Fire while on a business trip and then arrive home, you can turn on your Amazon enable TV and pick up right from where you left off. Same with e-books, perhaps you are reading Chuck Palahniuk's "Damned" on your regular Kindle while out at the beach and you get home you can pick up where you left off on the Fire.
A review, more pictures and unboxing video after the break.

Unboxing Video


One thing not shown in the video is that after connecting to a wireless network, it will download the latest update for the software. Not sure if this step will be the same for Kindle Fire's shipping today, but apparently as part of the setup process it checks for updates and installs if it finds one.

Physical
The Kindle Fire is practically the same size as my 3rd gen Kindle, but thicker and heavier.

Kindle Fire on the left compared to 3rd gen Kindle

Kindle Fire on top and 3rd gen below it, looking from the side

Kindle Fire on top and 3rd gen Kindle below it, looking at the bottom end

The headphone jack, USB/Power connector and power button are located on the bottom end of the device.
On the top end are two speakers.

Speaker ports on top end

This seems to be rather silly placement for the speakers as when viewing movies, they play in landscape orientation causing all the sound to come from one side of the device. There is enough separation be that the audio is noticeably coming from one side. The speakers themselves leave a bit to be desired, sounding pretty tinny and lackluster. Using a set of headphones is a must and the sound is good quality.

Software Interface
When you turn the device on, you are presented with a typical "lock" screen.

Lock screen

Similar to the Kindle e-readers lock screens, these images cycle through a number of different ones each time you turn the device on. A quick swipe of the finger from right to left unlocks the device.

The main screen is a shelf full of recent items, books, music, apps, web pages. Anything that you have used recently, shows up on the top shelf. Swiping the Recent shelf from side to side flips through the content in a sort of "cover flow" manner.
Just below it on a second shelf are favorites. These can be any book, video, app, web site. By touching and dragging up and down you can expose other favorite shelves. This same drag up and down concept to move through the content continues in each of the content areas
Pressing and holding down an item in the recent shelf will pop up a box wanting to know if you want to add it to the favorites. So an easy way to quickly get to your most used content. You can remove an item from favorites by doing the same action. By holding down and dragging a favorite you can rearrange the order they appear on the shelves.
There is a menu along the top to get to the various content sections: Newsstand, Books, Music, Video, Docs, Apps and Web.

Search bar and Content Section buttons

Newsstand
Newsstand is something new to the Kindle line of products.

Newsstand

 Any purchased magazines and newspapers will show upon these shelves. One of the things preventing me from getting magazines on the Kindle has been that it is limited to a small number of shades of grey, causing photos to be unappealing. The Fire with its full color display can take advantage of newspapers and magazines in color so photos look closer to their print brothers.

Magazine from the Newsstand

Holding the device in portrait orientation shows one page. Hold it landscape and you get a full spread. You can use the standard "pinch zoom" to zoom in on the text and pictures. It only allows zooming to a certain level. So if the text is still to small to read, you can tap towards the bottom of the screen to bring up a menu and there is an option to toggle between this "page" view and "text" view. Text view is just the text of the article, more like what you would find on a typical kindle.

Books
Quite obvious, but Books holds your library of e-books that you have purchased from the Amazon store.

Books Cloud view

Two buttons at the top, "Cloud" and "Device" allows you to filter the view to show everything you have purchased which is stored in Amazon's "Cloud" or downloaded to the device. The "cloud" would also include books you archived by removing them from the device.
There are sort options here to list the books by Recent, by Author and by Title, which makes locating things easier. By touching the display and dragging up and down you can move through the shelves of books.
One thing missing is the ability to group books into "collections" like the Kindle readers have, which makes it much easier to find content you want to read depending on your mood (ie. history, non-fiction, fiction, etc...)
Clicking on a book will load it full screen into the display.

Book text

 Text is crisp and the backlit display is bright. Pressing at the bottom edge of the display makes the e-book locations progress bar appear, showing how far through the book you are. There are also options to adjust the text size, typeface, margins, line spacing and color options. The color options allow you to change from black text on white background to white text on black background or a grey on tan color. 

Music
Music you've purchased will show up in this section.

Music albums view

 Similar to the Books section this has Cloud and Device buttons and then buttons to show Playlists, Artists, Albums and Songs. Clicking on an album brings up its track listing and you can select a track and begin to play. Music can be streamed straight from the Cloud or downloaded and listened to from the device.

Music with a track playing.

A cool feature here is that when you starting playing a track you can navigate away from the section and pull up a book to read and the music plays in the background.

Settings drop down menu with volume and playback controls

Tap the "settings" gear button on any page and it will show you the volume control and music playback controls as well as the information about the music (artist, album and song title).

Video
Unlike any of the other content sections, this section shows the Video Store view instead of the library of TV and Movies that you have purchased. Perhaps a little ploy to get you to purchase and stream more content, don't know.

Amazon Video store

The top section of the store promotes Amazon's famous free streaming movies and TV for Prime members. In order to download a movie/TV show to the device for offline viewing you have to purchase it.

Clicking the "Library" button in the top right corner will bring you to your collection of purchased TV and Movie content.

Library button

Video library

The Video library also has buttons for Cloud and Device and it can be filtered to show Movies or TV content that you've purchased. You can stream it or download content to watch when there isn't wireless connection. Video quality is good. I didn't experience any noticeable dropped frames or long buffering when streaming video. 

Streaming video content

The video section is going to be one, if not the, major features that will sell the Fire. And with WhisperSync keeping your place between your different devices it makes it really easy to watch content on the Fire.
In case you are wondering about the stand, it is a Marware Hybrid cover for the Fire that I purchased when I pre-ordered the device. It folds and hinges so you can prop up the fire in a position comfortable for viewing on a table top.

Marware Hybrid cover

Apps
The Apps section shows all the apps you currently have installed on the device and any apps that you have previously purchased or downloaded from the Amazon App store still in the Cloud. Apps can be sorted by Recent and by Title.

Apps

 Clicking the Store button in the top corner, loads the Amazon App store where you can purchase and download more apps. Amazon's big pockets also feature a free paid app every day.

My biggest gripe with the Kindle Fire is that it is completely locked to the Amazon App store. So if you are used to apps you love from the Android Marketplace, it is hit or miss whether they will also be in the Amazon App store. I'm not sure if Amazon screens apps, preventing some from being listed perhaps out of spite or for technical reasons...or if developers have to submit their content to be include in the App store and they just haven't done so yet. Seems as though all Google content is missing...no YouTube app, no Gmail, no Google+ app. No Facebook app (although they pre-install a link to the full Facebook website). You have to rely on the web mobile versions of those sites. I was disappointed I couldn't install the Dish Network remote access app that would allow me to stream content from my DVR and even watch live satellite TV on the device.
Perhaps this will change as the Fire picks up popularity and has a larger install base. At an affordable price tag of $200 more than a few people are going to pick it up.

Docs
The Docs section holds any docs that are on the device. Cool thing is that the device itself has its own email address. You can email PDF and Word documents directly to the device...even allow other people to do the same.

Docs content section

You can also connect the Fire to your computer using a micro USB cable to transfer documents to the device.

Web

The last section is the Web. Switching over to this section will show your open browser tabs. If there are no open tabs you get a screen full of bookmarks showing a thumbnail of each page. They took the time to pre-bookmark a number of popular sites, such as Facebook, Yahoo, Craigslist, Amazon, IMDB and Twitter among others.

Web browser

Amazon's new Silk browser has been talked about a lot for its speed. It seems speedy enough. I didn't run into any problems directly. At the bottom of the screen are the Page back and forward buttons, a menu button that brings up buttons for your downloads, browsing history and bookmarks. The bookmarks page also has an additional search button and will show some of your recent browsing history.

Menus and Settings

The strip along the top edge with settings, wireless strength indicator and battery meter will hide itself when viewing content.

Settings, wireless strength and batter meter

Press the bottom edge of the display to unhide the top strip and bring up a navigation menu along the bottom allowing you to go back to the previous location or the home shelf with your recent and favorite items.

Pressing any of the icons in the top right corner drops down a menu allowing you to lock and unlock the device, control the volume and brightness levels, manage wireless network settings, sync the device and a More button to access all of the device settings.

Settings drop down menu

There is no physical volume buttons and since the current volume level is only shown when this drop down menu is exposed, it can often catch you by surprise as you start up a video leaving you scrambling to hit the settings button, then drag the volume slider. Luckily the default selected item from the drop down menu is the volume control.

The More button exposes a whole host of different settings including de-registering the device, security settings, what applications are currently running, system version info, serial number and MAC address.

Settings

 

Final Thoughts

That's a basic overview of the device and some of my impressions from using it these last couple of days. I think it is a fantastic way to consume the Amazon content I've collected over the years. I'm really excited about the streaming video capabilities.

It won't replace my 3rd gen Kindle for book reading. The battery life on the Fire is good, I've been able to watch movies and TV shows without draining the battery completely, but the battery life on the 3rd gen Kindle can't be beat. The e-ink display makes reading easy even in bright light. While the Fire is fine for indoors viewing as seen here:

3rd Gen Kindle on the left and Fire on the right showing a book page indoors

But the backlit really shows its weakness once you walk outside:

3rd Gen Kindle on the left and Fire on the right showing a book page outdoors

 The other downside of the Fire is that it is wireless only which limits your ability to download content while on the go as the Kindle readers do. Granted adding 3G support to the device would boost its price tag. And even Amazon with its deep pockets isn't going to foot the bill for streaming music and video to the device leaving you stuck with another added expense.

In my case I have an EVO 4G with mobile hotspot capabilities. So I'm able to start up a hotspot and connect the Fire to it. I did this the other day as I arrived at a location for a meeting about 45 minutes early. I started up a hotspot, connected the Fire and streamed a show from Hulu+ while I waited.

So overall, things are promising. The device is easy to use and navigate. It does what it is supposed to, stream and playback content and it does it well. There are some minor nitpicks (such as limiting apps to Amazon's own App store) but Amazon tends to listen well to its customers and continue to re-invent and improve their products. Looking back at the original Kindle reader all the way to the new Touch version and the Fire you can really see the evolution of the product line. I'm confident that they will continue this trend with the Fire.