Amazon’s $199 Kindle Fire: Seven-inch display, no camera & mic, 30-day free Prime trial

9to5 Staff


Note: This is a mockup, not the actual Kindle Fire

Just as Amazon’s media event begins in New York, serving as a launchpad for their inaugural tablet, Bloomberg spoils the announcement by publishing key pieces of information about the device. It will be called the Kindle Fire, as rumored, and will cost just $199, which is a pretty big deal. The tablet has a seven-inch color display which responds to touch (just two fingersat once, though) and a “fresh and easy user interface” running on a forked Android version. Another biggie: The device will come with a 60-day free trial of Amazon Prime (a $79 a year value) membership.

Bad news: It has no cameras – not even a microphone. Heck, it even lacks 3G access so looks like the Fire will be a WiFi affair only. We’ll have more info soon as our own Seth Weintraub is on the scene in New York at Amazon’s press conference.

Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos is betting he can leverage Amazon’s dominance in e-commerce to pose a real challenge to Apple’s iPad, after tablets from rivals such as Hewlett-Packard Co. and Research In Motion Ltd. have fallen short. Sales of Amazon’s electronic books, movies and music on the device may help make up for the narrower profit margins that are likely to result from the low price, said Brian Blair, an analyst at Wedge Partners Corp. in New York.

The analyst observes what all of us have known for a long time, that the Seattle-based online retailer has the most compelling ecosystem to take on Apple’s iTunes juggernaut:

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Microsoft signs Android cross-licensing agreement with Samsung

9to5 Staff

Microsoft just announced a cross-licensing agreement with Samsung. Akin to their patent deals with other Android backers, this one will have Samsung pay per-device royalties for mobile phones and tablets running Android. Microsoft has in total eight cross-licensing agreements with Android backers Acer, General Dynamics Itronix, Onkyo, Velocity Micro, ViewSonic, Wistron, HTC and Samsung.

Microsoft explained in a blog post that the agreement “gives both companies greater patent coverage relating to each other’s technologies, and opens the door to a deeper partnership in the development of new phones for the Windows Phone platform”.

Did the software maker just say that Samsung will focus more on Windows Phone in the future? Per press release, Microsoft and Samsung “agreed to cooperate in the development and marketing of Windows Phone”. Could be just what Microsoft needs given their struggle to keep Nokia afloat. Patent expert Florian Mueller characterized the announcement on his FOSSPatents blog as “the most important Android-related intellectual property deal in its own right”, adding:

If Samsung truly believed that Google’s acquisition of Motorola Mobility was going to be helpful to the Android ecosystem at large, it would have waited until that deal is closed before concluding the license agreement with Microsoft. But Samsung probably knows it can’t rely on Google. It decided to address Android’s intellectual property issues on its own.

Samsung has circa 28,000 patents in the United States and more than 100,000 patents around the world. Curiously, Microsoft hasn’t targeted Apple’s iOS with its patents so far which leads us to believe that Oracle, Microsoft and Apple may be working together to derail Android or at least make it a pricey proposition for handset makers. Be that as it may, it is going to be interesting seeing how this Microsoft-Samsung patent protection affects the nine Apple vs. Samsung lawsuits in twenty countries around the world…

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Toshiba announces 7-inch Thrive tablet, available for under $400

Jake Smith

Toshiba has announced their 7-inch tablet this afternoon, which will be available in December for ‘under $400′. The specs for the device are pretty nice:  a 1GHz dual-core Tegra 2 processor, 1GB of RAM, 16GB or 32GB of flash storage, Android 3.2, a 5-megapixel rear-shooter, 2-megapixel front-facing shooter, and 1280 x 800 display.

The little guy is also pretty light — only .88 lb. Check out This is my next’s hands-on above!

The pre-paid $99 Android phone is here

Seth Weintraub

As noted on 9to5toys.com, Best Buy is selling the Virgin/Sprint LG Optimus V Android Smartphone for $100 without a plan. (Why?)  Yes, that means you can buy the Android 2.2 phone with 2GB of memory, GPS, Bluetooth and forgo the plan altogether.  Think of it as a cheap Galaxy Player for the kids.  But it is even better with Virgins simple, cheap all you can eat data plans.

I’ve used this phone and I like it a lot.  It doesn’t play Flash video, has a small 320×480 screen (Think iPhone 3GS), and doesn’t have a front side camera for video chatting, but it is very solid. It has a great GPS, makes calls well and Apps switch and open fast, in part because Virgin doesn’t do overlays.  I’ve recommended it to friends and family who have feature phones and want to step up to Smartphones without increasing their monthly costs.  In fact, many actually lower their costs by going on Virgin Mobile’s $25-$35/month all you can eat data/text and 300 minute plans.

But, at $99 without a plan, it is the first solid Android device in the US to break the $99 price point.  This trend may be more important than the next Galaxy or HTC 720P Androids or iPhones because it will get many more people on the mobile Internet.

Think about it. Where is the growth in the market? The latest Nielsen Data says that only 50-60% of Americans have Smartphones.  The other 40% could probably afford to get this device instead of their current feature phone without taking much of a hit on their monthly costs.  In fact, with the economy uncertain, a lot of post paid customers might want to chop their monthly bill in half with this little guy. Read more

Mozilla releases Firefox 7 for Android

Jake Smith

Along with the release of Firefox 7 on the desktop, Mozilla has released Firefox 7 for Android. Sadly, the mobile release doesn’t feature as many changes as the desktop, but we’re sure they’ll be more to come. Change log:

  1. Improved copy and paste: Copy any site content and paste to other applications, SMS, or text fields
  2. Built-in language detection on first run
  3. WebSockets API: Powerful tool for Web developers to build responsive Web apps and sites

Hit up the download link after the break: (via Android Central)

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Rumor: Samsung looking to bring concept Galaxy Skin phone with flexible AMOLED display to market in 2012

9to5 Staff

Phone concepts are quite often gorgeous to look at, but most (if not all) end up filed under the ‘Not Feasible’ drawer. Not for Samsung. The company set out on an ambitious project to design a sci-fi smartphone with a flexible AMOLED display. This is not a concept, mind you, but a real thing. The display can be bent around a cylinder with a one-inch diameter, allowing the phone to become a clock, a wrist-watch a mouse and so forth. It draws from an idea co-developed by Professor Haeseong J. Jee and designer Hye Yeon You. Samsung unveiled a prototype at the CES 2011 show in Las Vegas and today International Business Times claims it is coming in 2012:

The ground-breaking feature of the futuristic device is that it is flexible and can take various shapes. The displays are rollable, bendable and can even survive blows from a hammer. It is the first of its kind and is set to mold a new definition for smartphones. Samsung previously confirmed the production of flexible AMOLED displays that may debut in the second quarter of 2012.

The AMOLED display itself uses plastic polyimide substrate instead of glass, allowing for high flexibility. Other features of the so-called Galaxy Skin smartphone are said to include an eight-megapixel camera with Auto Focus, Self Shot, Action Shot, Panorama Shot, Stop Motion and Add Me features, a 1.2GHz CPU with 1GB of RAM and apparently a future Android version code-named Jelly Bean.

Consider these stats more of a reference that the actual hardware features set in stone because, you know, it’s just a concept (until it hits the market) and we all know where great concepts usually go – to the Island of Misfit Toys.

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