Thursday, September 6, 2012
Seven Inch Kindle Fire HD: First Impressions

After today's announcements I got to spend a little time playing with the new 7 inch Kindle Fire HD. Amazon has upped their game by releasing an updating Kindle Fire, and more importantly, two Kindle Fire HDs. Read on for my first impressions of the Kindle Fire HD.
While Amazon says they've made some major improvements to the Kindle Fire, I didn't see a lot of improvements in the UI or the response time. The UI itself is almost identical to the original Fire, including the consistent presence of lag from the home screen. Jumping between sections like Books or Videos takes a few seconds, making the overall experience feel cheap. It's possible that the 8.9 inch version of the Kindle Fire HD will perform better, but there isn't much of a difference between the processors in each model (the 7 inch model runs the TI OMAP 4460 while the 8.9 inch model runs the 4470).
One big improvement over the previous Kindle Fire is the screen. Bezos wasn't