The Amazon Fire, formerly called the Kindle Fire, is a line of

tablet computer A tablet computer, commonly shortened to tablet, is a mobile device, typically with a mobile operating system and touchscreen display processing circuitry, and a rechargeable battery in a single, thin and flat package. Tablets, being comput ...

s developed by

Amazon Amazon most often refers to: * Amazons, a tribe of female warriors in Greek mythology * Amazon rainforest, a rainforest covering most of the Amazon basin * Amazon River, in South America * Amazon (company), an American multinational technology c ...

. Built with

Quanta Computer Quanta Computer Incorporated () () is a Taiwan-based manufacturer of notebook computers and other electronic hardware. Its customers include Apple Inc., Dell, Hewlett-Packard Inc., Acer Inc., Alienware, Amazon.com, Cisco, Fujitsu, Gericom, Lenov ...

, the Kindle Fire was first released in November 2011, featuring a color 7-inch

multi-touch In computing, multi-touch is technology that enables a surface (a touchpad or touchscreen) to recognize the presence of more than one somatosensory system, point of contact with the surface at the same time. The origins of multitouch began at CER ...

display with

IPS IPS, ips, or iPS may refer to: Science and technology Biology and medicine * ''Ips'' (genus), a genus of bark beetle * Induced pluripotent stem cell or iPS cells * Intermittent photic stimulation, a neuroimaging technique * Intraparietal sulcus, ...

technology and running a custom version of

Google Google LLC () is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. ...

's Android

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also in ...

called

Fire OS Fire OS is a mobile operating system based on the Android Open Source Project, it is developed by Amazon for their devices. Fire OS includes proprietary software, a customized user interface primarily centered on content consumption, and heavy ...

. The Kindle

Fire HD The Fire HD, also known as Kindle Fire HD, is a member of the Amazon Fire family of tablet computers. Fire HD refers to Amazon Fire family tablets with HD resolution. The ten generation Fire HD subfamily consists of: 7" and 8.9" (2012 models), 7" ...

followed in September 2012, and the Kindle

Fire HDX The Fire HDX, formerly named Kindle Fire HDX, was a high-end model in Amazon Fire line of tablet computers. It was announced on September 25, 2013 and was available in two models, 7 inch and 8.9 inch. The 7 inch WiFi model was rele ...

in September 2013. In September 2014, when the fourth generation was introduced, the name " Kindle" was dropped. In later generations, the Fire tablet is also able to convert into a

Smart speaker A smart speaker is a type of loudspeaker and voice command device with an integrated virtual assistant that offers interactive actions and hands-free activation with the help of one "hot word" (or several "hot words"). Some smart speakers can a ...

turning on the "Show Mode" options, which the primary interaction will be by voice command through

Alexa Alexa may refer to: Technology *Amazon Alexa, a virtual assistant developed by Amazon * Alexa Internet, a defunct website ranking and traffic analysis service * Arri Alexa, a digital motion picture camera People * Alexa (name), a given name a ...

History

The Kindle Fire—which includes access to the

Amazon Appstore Amazon Appstore is an app store for Android-compatible platforms operated by Amazon.com Services, LLC, a subsidiary of Amazon. The store is primarily used as the storefront for Amazon's Android-based Fire OS. including Amazon Fire tablets, a ...

, streaming movies and TV shows, and the

Kindle Store The Kindle Store is an Internet, online e-book e-commerce store operated by Amazon (company), Amazon as part of its retail website and can be accessed from any Amazon Kindle, Fire HD, Fire tablet or Kindle mobile app. At the launch of the Kindl ...

for

e-book An ebook (short for electronic book), also known as an e-book or eBook, is a book publication made available in digital form, consisting of text, images, or both, readable on the flat-panel display of computers or other electronic devices. Alt ...

s—was released to consumers in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

on November 14, 2011, after being announced on September 28. On September 7, 2012, upgrades to the device were announced with consumer availability to those European countries with a localised version of Amazon's website (

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical re ...

and

Spain , image_flag = Bandera de España.svg , image_coat = Escudo de España (mazonado).svg , national_motto = ''Plus ultra'' (Latin)(English: "Further Beyond") , national_anthem = (English: "Royal March") , i ...

). The original Kindle Fire retailed for in 2011. Estimates of the device's initial

bill of materials A bill of materials or product structure (sometimes bill of material, BOM or associated list) is a list of the raw materials, sub-assemblies, intermediate assemblies, sub-components, parts, and the quantities of each needed to manufacture an end ...

cost ranged from $150 to $202. Amazon's business strategy was stated in 2011 as making money through sales of digital content on the ''Fire'', rather than through sales of the device itself. , the Kindle Fire was the second best selling tablet after

Apple An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple fruit tree, trees are agriculture, cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus ''Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, wh ...

iPad The iPad is a brand of iOS and iPadOS-based tablet computers that are developed by Apple Inc. The iPad was conceived before the related iPhone but the iPhone was developed and released first. Speculation about the development, operating s ...

, with about 7 million units sold according to estimates by

Forrester Research Forrester is a research and advisory company that offers a variety of services including research, consulting, and events. Forrester has nine North America locations: Cambridge, Massachusetts; New York, New York; San Francisco, California; McL ...

and Amazon's tablets were the fourth best selling. On September 6, 2012, the Kindle Fire was upgraded to the second generation, and its price was reduced to , RAM upgraded to 1 GB and processor clock speed upgraded to 1.2 GHz. A more powerful and video-friendly version, the

Kindle Fire HD The Fire HD, also known as Kindle Fire HD, is a member of the Amazon Fire family of tablet computers. Fire HD refers to Amazon Fire family tablets with HD resolution. The ten generation Fire HD subfamily consists of: 7" and 8.9" (2012 models), 7" ...

(7 and 8.9 inch versions) was also made available, initially priced at $199 and $299. On September 25, 2013, the

was upgraded as the third generation ''Fire'', priced at , and the Kindle Fire HDX was introduced. The Kindle Fire HDX had an improved graphics engine, double the memory, and triple the processor speed of the previous model. The 7-inch and 8.99-inch versions were introduced at and respectively. In September 2014, the Fire HDX 8.9 and the Fire HD were upgraded to the fourth generation of Fire tablets, removing the "Kindle" adjective in the naming scheme. There was also the Fire HD 6 that has a six-inch screen with a

quad-core A multi-core processor is a microprocessor on a single integrated circuit with two or more separate processing units, called cores, each of which reads and executes program instructions. The instructions are ordinary CPU instructions (such a ...

processor priced at . In September 2015, Amazon announced the release of the Fire 7, priced at for the 8GB version that displays advertisements on the lock screen. it was the lowest-priced Amazon tablet. In June 2016, its price was dropped briefly to . This fifth generation tablet introduced a micro SD card slot for extra storage. In September 2016, Amazon announced the release of the Fire HD 8 which includes the virtual assistant

, priced at . ''

Fortune Fortune may refer to: General * Fortuna or Fortune, the Roman goddess of luck * Luck * Wealth * Fortune, a prediction made in fortune-telling * Fortune, in a fortune cookie Arts and entertainment Film and television * ''The Fortune'' (1931 film) ...

'' reported that, "As with most of Amazon's devices, the aim isn't to make money off of the hardware but instead to sell digital content such as books, movies, and TV shows to users". A slightly improved Fire 7 was released in June 2017, keeping the US$49.99 price point. An upgraded model of Fire 7 was announced in May 2019, with a scheduled release in June 2019 and keeping the US$49.99 price point.

Design

Hardware

The Kindle Fire hardware is manufactured by

(an

Original Design Manufacturer An original design manufacturer is a company that designs and manufactures a product that is eventually rebranded by another firm for sale. Such companies allow the firm that owns or licenses the brand to produce products while having to engage in ...

), which also originally helped design the

BlackBerry PlayBook The BlackBerry PlayBook is a Tablet computer#Mini tablets, mini tablet computer developed by BlackBerry (company), BlackBerry and made by Quanta Computer, an original design manufacturer (ODM).

, using it as a hardware template for the Kindle Fire. First-generation Kindle Fire devices employed a 1-GHz

Texas Instruments OMAP The OMAP (Open Multimedia Applications Platform) family, developed by Texas Instruments, was a series of image/video processors. They are proprietary system on chips (SoCs) for portable and mobile multimedia applications. OMAP devices generally ...

4430

dual-core A multi-core processor is a microprocessor on a single integrated circuit with two or more separate processing units, called cores, each of which reads and executes program instructions. The instructions are ordinary CPU instructions (such ...

processor. The device has a 2-point multi-touch colour LCD screen with a diagonal length of and a 600×1024-pixel resolution (160 dpi density). Connectivity is through

802.11n IEEE 802.11n-2009 or 802.11n is a wireless-networking standard that uses multiple antennas to increase data rates. The Wi-Fi Alliance has also retroactively labelled the technology for the standard as Wi-Fi 4. It standardized support for multipl ...

Wi-Fi Wi-Fi () is a family of wireless network protocols, based on the IEEE 802.11 family of standards, which are commonly used for local area networking of devices and Internet access, allowing nearby digital devices to exchange data by radio wave ...

and

USB 2.0 Universal Serial Bus (USB) is an industry standard that establishes specifications for cables, connectors and protocols for connection, communication and power supply (interfacing) between computers, peripherals and other computers. A broad ...

(Micro-B connector). The device includes 8 GB of internal storage—said to be enough for 80 applications, plus either 10 movies or 800 songs or 6,000 books. According to Amazon, the first-generation Kindle Fire's 4400 mAh battery sustains up to 8 hours of consecutive reading and up to 7.5 hours of video playback with wireless off; later generations all offered around 7–8 hours Of the 8 GB internal storage available in the first-generation Kindle Fire, approximately 6.5 GB was available for content. The first-generation Kindle Fire has a sensor on the upper left-hand corner of the screen. This was widely considered to be an ambient-light sensor, disabled since an early software upgrade. Colour display technologies consume much more power than monochrome

electronic paper Electronic paper, also sometimes electronic ink, e-ink or electrophoretic display, are display devices that mimic the appearance of ordinary ink on paper. Unlike conventional flat panel displays that emit light, an electronic paper display ref ...

(E-ink) types; Fire offer a typical battery life of 8 hours of mixed usage, while monochrome Kindles offer 15 to 30 hours' use without WiFi—"battery lasts weeks on a single charge"—with a much lower-capacity battery.

Software

The first generation of Kindle Fire devices run a customised Android 2.3.3 Gingerbread OS. The second-generation

runs a customised Android 4.0.3 Ice Cream Sandwich OS. Along with access to

, the Fire includes a cloud-accelerated "split browser",

Amazon Silk Amazon Silk is a web browser developed by Amazon. It was launched in November 2011 for Kindle Fire and Fire Phone, and a Fire TV version was launched in November 2017. The addition of Silk to the Echo Show was announced at an Amazon event in Se ...

, using

Amazon EC2 Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) is a part of Amazon.com's cloud-computing platform, Amazon Web Services (AWS), that allows users to rent virtual computers on which to run their own computer applications. EC2 encourages scalable deployment of ...

for off-device cloud computation; including webpage layout and rendering, and Google's

SPDY SPDY (pronounced "speedy") is an obsolete open-specification communication protocol developed for transporting web content. SPDY became the basis for HTTP/2 specification. However, HTTP/2 diverged from SPDY and eventually HTTP/2 subsumed all u ...

protocol for faster webpage content transmission. The user's Amazon digital content is given free storage in Amazon Cloud's web-storage platform, 5 GB music storage in

Amazon Cloud Drive Amazon Drive, formerly known as Amazon Cloud Drive, was a File hosting service, cloud storage application managed by Amazon.com, Amazon. The service offers secure cloud storage, file backup, file sharing, and Photo printing. Using an Amazon accoun ...

, and a built-in email application allows webmail (

Gmail Gmail is a free email service provided by Google. As of 2019, it had 1.5 billion active users worldwide. A user typically accesses Gmail in a web browser or the official mobile app. Google also supports the use of email clients via the POP and ...

Yahoo! Yahoo! (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web services provider. It is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California and operated by the namesake company Yahoo Inc., which is 90% owned by investment funds managed by Apollo Global Man ...

Hotmail Outlook.com is a webmail service that is part of the Microsoft 365 product family. It offers mail, Calendaring software, calendaring, Address book, contacts, and Task management, tasks services. Founded in 1996 by Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smit ...

AOL Mail AOL Mail (stylized as Aol Mail.) is a free web-based email service provided by AOL, a division of Yahoo. Features AOL Mail has the following features available: * Email attachment limit: 25 MB * Max mailbox size: Unlimited * Supported protoc ...

, etc.) to be merged into one inbox. The subscription-based

Amazon Prime Amazon Prime is a paid subscription service from Amazon which is available in various countries and gives users access to additional services otherwise unavailable or available at a premium to other Amazon customers. Services include same, one- ...

, which includes unlimited streaming of movies and TV shows, is available with a free 30-day trial period. Content formats supported by the first-generation Kindle Fire were

Kindle Format 8 Kindle File Format is a proprietary e-book file format created by Amazon.com that can be downloaded and read on devices like smartphones, tablets, computers, or e-readers that have Amazon's Kindle app. E-book files in the Kindle File Format or ...

(KF8), Kindle Mobi (

.azw Kindle File Format is a proprietary e-book file format created by Amazon.com that can be downloaded and read on devices like smartphones, tablets, computers, or e-readers that have Amazon's Kindle app. E-book files in the Kindle File Forma ...

), TXT,

PDF Portable Document Format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems. ...

, unrestricted

MOBI Mobi or MOBI may refer to: Companies * Mobi (company), an American wireless provider Computing * .mobi, internet top domain name * .mobi, a file extension of the deprecated Mobipocket e-book format People * Mobi Fehr (born 1994), American soc ...

, PRC natively,

Audible Audible may refer to: * Audible (service), an online audiobook store * Audible (American football), a tactic used by quarterbacks * ''Audible'' (film), a short documentary film featuring a deaf high school football player * Audible finish or ru ...

(Audible Enhanced (AA, AAX)),

DOC DOC, Doc, doc or DoC may refer to: In film and television * ''Doc'' (2001 TV series), a 2001–2004 PAX series * ''Doc'' (1975 TV series), a 1975–1976 CBS sitcom * "D.O.C." (''Lost''), a television episode * ''Doc'' (film), a 1971 Wester ...

DOCX Office Open XML (also informally known as OOXML) is a zipped, XML-based file format developed by Microsoft for representing spreadsheets, charts, presentations and word processing documents. Ecma International standardized the initial version a ...

JPEG JPEG ( ) is a commonly used method of lossy compression for digital images, particularly for those images produced by digital photography. The degree of compression can be adjusted, allowing a selectable tradeoff between storage size and imag ...

GIF The Graphics Interchange Format (GIF; or , see pronunciation) is a bitmap image format that was developed by a team at the online services provider CompuServe led by American computer scientist Steve Wilhite and released on 15 June 1987. ...

, PNG, BMP, non-DRM AAC,

MP3 MP3 (formally MPEG-1 Audio Layer III or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III) is a coding format for digital audio developed largely by the Fraunhofer Society in Germany, with support from other digital scientists in the United States and elsewhere. Origin ...

MIDI MIDI (; Musical Instrument Digital Interface) is a technical standard that describes a communications protocol, digital interface, and electrical connectors that connect a wide variety of electronic musical instruments, computers, and re ...

OGG Ogg is a free, open container format maintained by the Xiph.Org Foundation. The authors of the Ogg format state that it is unrestricted by software patents and is designed to provide for efficient streaming and manipulation of high-quality di ...

WAV Waveform Audio File Format (WAVE, or WAV due to its filename extension; pronounced "wave") is an audio file format standard, developed by IBM and Microsoft, for storing an audio bitstream on PCs. It is the main format used on Microsoft Wind ...

, MP4,

VP8 VP8 is an open and royalty-free video compression format released by On2 Technologies in 2008. Initially released as a proprietary successor to On2's previous VP7 format, VP8 was released as an open and royalty-free format in May 2010 after Goo ...

. Because of Amazon's USB driver implementation, the first-generation Kindle Fire suffered from slow USB transfer speeds. For example, transferring an 800MB video file may have taken more than three minutes in 2011. It is possible to convert a Kindle Fire to a tablet running standard Android, with some loss of Amazon-related functionality, and lacking features such as

Bluetooth Bluetooth is a short-range wireless technology standard that is used for exchanging data between fixed and mobile devices over short distances and building personal area networks (PANs). In the most widely used mode, transmission power is limi ...

, microphone, camera, and

memory expansion Memory is the faculty of the mind by which data or information is encoded, stored, and retrieved when needed. It is the retention of information over time for the purpose of influencing future action. If past events could not be remembered, ...

. In May 2022, Amazon announced the company were updating the foundation of the Fire Operating System. Amazon’s next Fire 7 Tablet will come with the company’s Fire OS called Fire OS 8, while Fire OS 7 has run on Android 9 since 2018, Fire OS 8 will be based on Android 11, which the company stated is a pretty significant upgrade to the foundational software currently powering Amazon tablets. With this development the company aims to introduce new user features such as a system-wide dark mode.

Reception

Analysts had projected the device to be a strong competitor to Apple's

, and that other Android device makers would suffer lost sales. In a 2012 review published by

Project Gutenberg Project Gutenberg (PG) is a Virtual volunteering, volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, as well as to "encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks." It was founded in 1971 by American writer Michael S. Hart and is the ...

, the Kindle Fire was called a "huge step back in freedom from the Kindle 3"; the reviewer noted that Amazon introduced a "deliberate limitation" into the Fire that didn't exist in the previous version: it is no longer possible to download free

s from websites such as Project Gutenberg,

Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music, ...

and

Google Books Google Books (previously known as Google Book Search, Google Print, and by its code-name Project Ocean) is a service from Google Inc. that searches the full text of books and magazines that Google has scanned, converted to text using optical c ...

and have them stored permanently in the same places where books from Amazon are kept.

Sales

Customers began receiving Kindle Fires on November 15, 2011; in December 2012, customers had purchased over a million Kindle devices per week.

International Data Corporation International Data Group (IDG, Inc.) is a market intelligence and demand generation company focused on the technology industry. IDG, Inc.’s mission is centered around supporting the technology industry through research, data, marketing technol ...

(IDC) estimated that the Kindle Fire sold about 4.7 million units during the fourth quarter of 2011. The Amazon Kindle Fire helped the company beat their 2012 first quarter estimates and boosted the company's stock in extended trading. As of May 2013, about 7 million units had been sold according to estimates. Statistics for FY2014 or Q1&2 2015 are not yet available.

Family

Up to the present, there have been eleven generations of Fire tablets, spread across three different feature design lines: Fire,

and

. Beyond this usage, Fire is used for explicit phone devices and for TV add-on sticks.

Models

Overview on generations and models for all Fire tablet devices: Detailed specifications for some of the 7" Fire tablets:

Gallery

File:Wikipedia Kindle Fire 1442.JPG, The Kindle Fire in horizontal position displaying web page , Kindle Fire size relative to a hand File:Wikipedia Kindle Fire & iPad 1439.JPG, The

(left) compared with the Kindle Fire (right) File:Wikipedia Kindle Fire & iPod 1441.JPG, The Kindle Fire (left) compared with the

iPod Touch The iPod Touch (stylized as iPod touch) is a discontinued line of iOS-based mobile devices designed and marketed by Apple Inc. with a touchscreen-controlled user interface. As with other iPod models, the iPod Touch can be used as a music pl ...

(right) File:1st gen Comparison iPad Mini & Google Nexus 7 & Kindle Fire Wikipedia screen 03 2013 6262.jpg, The Kindle Fire (left) compared with the

iPad Mini The iPad Mini (branded and marketed as iPad mini) is a line of mini tablet computers designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc. It is a sub-series of the iPad line of tablets, with screen sizes of 7.9 inches and 8.3 inches. The first- ...

(center) and the

Nexus 7 (2012 version) The first-generation Nexus 7 is a mini tablet computer co-developed by Google and Asus that runs the Android operating system. It is the first tablet in the Google Nexus series of Android consumer devices marketed by Google and built by a ...

(right)

References

External links

Fire Tablets
– home page on Amazon site
Amazon Fire - Device and Feature Specifications

Kindle Fire Review
at ''

The Wall Street Journal ''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...

'' {{Authority control

Kindle Fire The Amazon Fire, formerly called the Kindle Fire, is a line of tablet computers developed by Amazon. Built with Quanta Computer, the Kindle Fire was first released in November 2011, featuring a color 7-inch multi-touch display with IPS tech ...

Android (operating system) devices Tablet computers Tablet computers introduced in 2011 Touchscreen portable media players