Amazon’ s latest device and OS launches created none of the media thunder of the iPhone 6 debut, but the retailer continues to build a real power base within Android. The Fire Phone may not keep Apple up at nights, but with its low cost tablets and Fire OS software platform, Amazon can teach its rivals some lessons about adapting to a cloud-based world. And while it mysteriously backed away from its low cost, content-driven model with its first smartphone, it is still firmly on that track with its tablets.
The fourth release of Fire OS, codenamed Sangria, is heavy on cloud integration, an area where Amazon’s user experience scores highly, and where Apple continues to be halfhearted. Amazon is also stepping up its efforts in an area where iPads are certainly ahead of Kindle Fires, in the enterprise. For instance, Fire OS 4 supports profiles for multiple accounts, allowing separation of business and personal usage in the world of BYOD, with separate preferences for email, social media and other settings, for each profile. This feature goes further than profiles in standard Android, and can also be used to share a single Amazon device between different family members (again highlighting that hardware sales are not the point for Amazon, whose goal is to drive increased content purchases).
The cloud integration is well ahead of rivals in its depth, but of course, like Apple, Amazon locks users into its own services. Amazon’s cloud syncs the device across other platforms, and heavy duty processing is carried out there rather than on-device. Apps, games and the Kindle books library are opened up across devices, but of course, key cloud players like Dropbox and Google itself are not supporting Fire OS. Kindle users are not as closed-in as iPhone lovers, but they are certainly more restricted than those on other Android platforms.
By choosing to create its own branch of Android, incompatible with the mainstream version backed by the Open Handset Alliance, Amazon has set up a rival power base to that of Google. It is able to optimize its platform for its own services, particularly in the purchasing and content consumption which drive its revenues. However, like Apple, it relies on consumers falling in love with its experience and being content to stay within it, sacrificing some of the openness and choice of applications that come with vanilla Android.
Fire OS 4 is built on top of Android 4.4 (KitKat) and is not a full fork, but has its own user interface – now updated – and developer hooks. One of the OS’s claims to fame – and an important one for heavy web and video consumption –is its extreme efficiency. This supports a faster experience than equivalent Android devices, claims Amazon, and is also seen in the high level of processing which is done off-device, in the cloud, especially in the Silk browser.
Amazon also claims better battery life with its new release, adding a feature called Smart Suspend, which sets up an intelligent device-specific profile, learning from the user’s behavior when to turn off wireless functionality proactively. This can extend battery life by up to 25%, says the vendor.
Also moving towards devices that know your tastes better than you do – important for pushing content purchases and a key feature of Amazon’s experiences since its original recommendations engine – is ASAP (Advanced Streaming and Prediction), which predicts the movies and TV that a user may want to view and caches them.
In addition, Amazon has made its Firefly service, originally launched on the Fire Phone, tablet-compatible, allowing Kindle Fire users to take photographs and then match them to items in the Amazon store for buying.
The new OS is available now for fourth generation Fire tablet users, and early next year for the smartphone.
The OS upgrade is all about persuading users to buy more content and physical items, and making that so easy as to be addictive. That business model is supported by the new tablets, continuing Amazon’s policy of driving down hardware costs in order to remove any barriers to consumption of its services. Attractive and cheap hardware introduces more people to its platform – optimized on its own devices to a far greater extent than in the PC or smartphone apps. It remains a mystery why Amazon abandoned this policy, which clearly differentiates it from the handset giants, when it launched the Fire Phone, which is not particularly low-cost, and whose sales have been hampered by opting for an old-fashioned exclusive with AT&T (and now O2 in the UK and Germany).
Nothing is changed for the tablets, however. The latest addition to the family comes in under $100 but delivers high quality features. The company added four new slates and two ereaders to its line-up, segmenting its portfolio to appeal separately to various user groups including business people and children.
The latest Fire HD and Fire HDX tablets both come with brighter, sharper displays. The HDX 7 has an 8.9-inch display, which Amazon claims has one million more pixels than an iPad Air at 339ppi. It runs the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 805 processor at 2.5GHz, and claims a 75% faster graphics processing unit, plus 802.11ac WiFi. It features Amazon’s Dynamic Lighting Control technology for easier book reading and has two cameras, the rear-facing one at 8-megapixels and 1080p video.
For business users, the HDX 7 comes with WPS Office, an alternative to Microsoft Office, and there is tight integration with Amazon’s Cloud Drive – though weaning enterprise users away from Office and Dropbox is a huge challenge for a company whose device platform strengths lie in consumer experience. For Windows addicts, the tablet can also run Amazon Workspaces, allowing a copy of Windows 8 to be run from the cloud, something executives said would address a common “pain point” for business people.
At $379, the HDX 7 is lower priced than most slates with similar specifications, though a 4G version goes up to $479. However, for the real budget user, the 6-inch HD 6 starts at $99, or $139 for the 7-inch HD 7. CEO Jeff Bezos said the former model was the “most powerful tablet under $100.”
Both tablets run on MediaTek 1.5GHz quad-core processors, indicating how the Taiwanese firm is muscling in on Qualcomm in the budget category. For their price tags, the specifications are strong, with high definition displays (252ppi on the HD 6 and 216ppi on its stablemate), Gorilla Glass, and the option of the Fire Keyboard for business users.
Amazon executives said the devices would “break even” on the profit side, reinforcing the fact that most revenues will come from services, apps and content, directly driven by the tablet’s experience.
There is also a children’s model, the Fire HD Kids Edition, which comes with a two-year ‘nearly everything’ guarantee that a broken device will be replaced for free even if it is broken into pieces, which Amazon hopes will remove the element of risk for parents buying a tablet for a younger child. It comes with an adapted Fire OS with parental controls and other safeguards, and with in-app purchasing disabled.
The two ereaders are a $99 basic Kindle update and a $119 Paperwhite, both with the new X-Ray feature, which allows users to look up character profiles and other new information while reading. The devices support Kindle Unlimited, which offers access to over 700,000 books for $9.99 a month. And Amazon’s thinnest ereader ever, the Kindle Voyage, was also glimpsed in leaked details. This will be the premium family member at $199, with a far sharper and brighter screen, matte for outdoor reading. It uses the vendor’s Adapted Front Light technology, which dims the screen depending on the lighting conditions; and also adds haptic-enabled touch buttons for page scrolling, and free 3G connectivity.