Amazon uses its Kindle Fire tablets to deliver a wide range of services – from e-books to movies to videogames to music. The newest versions of the tablets, which the company showed for the first time today, add a new offering: live customer support over video chat.
The redesigned Kindle Fire HDX – the new name hints at the updated displays – comes in the same 7-inch and 8.9-inch configurations as the previous Kindle Fire tablets. The new Kindle tablets also include the expected processor and RAM bump. Both models are available for pre-order now, with the 7-inch starting at $230 and shipping November 14, and the 8.9-inch starting at $380 and shipping December 10.
If you're suffering from technical woes, the new Mayday feature contacts an Amazon tech-support employee directly on the tablet. You see the support person on your screen in a tiny video box while they help you.But more important than these iterative hardware enhancements is Amazon's Mayday live tech support feature, which uses live Amazon employees to help new tablet owners navigate and troubleshoot their Fire devices.
At a time when most tablet manufacturers are competing solely on hardware features – seeing who can pack the most pixels into their displays or build around the fastest processors – Amazon is choosing to diferentiate itself by further humanizing the user experience. And that's not to say that the new Kindle Fire HDX is a slouch hardware-wise. The upgrades to the internals make it a thoroughly modern tablet that can compete with the iPad and Android-based devices. But rather than add some gimmicky software tricks to wow the curious, Amazon is building in a feature that makes the tablet friendlier, less intimidating. And its accomplishing it by doing what Amazon does best: by leveraging the power of its massive infrastructre.
If you're suffering from technical woes, the new Mayday feature contacts an Amazon tech-support employee directly on the tablet. You see the support person on your screen in a tiny video box while they help you. The video window can be moved by the user or Amazon employee to make sure both parties can see the area of the screen they need to interact with. Amazon's personnel can also draw directly on your screen to help you find and complete tasks. If you'd rather let Amazon do all the work, control of your tablet can be handed over entirely to your new tiny video friend. Just ask them to complete a task and they'll take care of it while you watch.
"Our goal is to elevate that whole tech support experience," Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos told WIRED in an interview Tuesday.
The service is available anytime for free to anyone with a Kindle Fire HDX. The tech support staff is trained to disable their ability to see your screen when you enter a password, and you can ask them to disable the screen mirroring feature at any time. Mayday does not use the tablet's front-facing camera, so the Amazon staff won't see you during your less-presentable moments.
According to Bezos, Mayday is possible because Amazon controls the entire product stack, from hardware and software in the Fire HDX to the cloud system that's powered by Amazon's AWS system.
Both Fire tablets – the 7-incher and the 8.9-incher – are powered by 2.2GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon processors. They've got three times the processing power of the previous Kindle Fires. The RAM has also been doubled from last year's models to 2GB. Amazon wants to make sure this tablet competes with the best out there, and that it appeals to the business market.
As noted earlier, the Kindle Fire isn't sleeping through the race for the best screen. The 2560 x 1600 display on the 8.9-inch Kindle Fire HDX hits a density of 339 pixels-per-inch (ppi). The 7-inch version sports a 1920 x 1200 display with a density of 323 ppi. According to Amazon, both screens are 100 percent sRGB accurate. The new displays also support a new auto-contrast feature that adjusts the screen contrast based on available lighting. When the lights get bright, instead of just bumping up the brightness, the contrast level adjusts, and on-screen items that might be otherwise lost in the shadows are given priority.
The OS, now known as the Fire OS, includes new enterprise-level features including updated email with threaded messages, support for wireless printing, VPN integration, and support for encryption. If you're less-inclined to take your Kindle Fire HDX to work, the updated OS supports more user-friendly features like the ability to download Amazon Prime Instant TV shows and movies directly to the tablet, which makes it great for plane trips. You can also fling Prime video to supported devices running the Amazon Instant Video app.
The X-Ray feature, which lets you explore meta information like actor bios and trivia during movies, now works for music too. You can follow along to the lyrics (or sing a long) as a song plays. Scroll down to a specific lyric and the music syncs with the text you're looking at.
The 8.9-inch Kindle Fire HDX will start at $380 for 16GB (the 32GB is $430 and the 64GB is $480). The 7-inch version starts at $230 for 16GB (32GB costs $270, and the 64GB is $310). 4G LTE access can be added to both models for a $100 premium.
Pre-orders are available now, with the 7-inch shipping November 14 and the 8.9-inch shipping December 10.
All photos: David Ryder/WIRED
