New colour 7 inch Amazon Kindle priced at $250

Techcrunch have had a hands on with the upcoming full colour Kindle tablet and author MG Siegler says it is ‘going to be a big deal'.

Rumours of an Amazon full colour tablet have been rife now for months, and Kitguru has reported on the news before. This is the first time however than a journalist has had a first hand experience with the Android tablet and it is looking very positive indeed.

From all appearances, it looks as if Amazon are tweaking and customising the Android operating system. MG Siegler says “And this is where things get really interesting. As anticipated, Amazon has forked Android to build their own version for the Kindle. Simply put: it looks nothing like the Android you’re used to seeing.

It’s black, dark blue, and a bunch of orange. The main screen is a carousel that looks like Cover Flow in iTunes which displays all the content you have on the device. This includes books, apps, movies, etc. Below the main carousel is a dock to pin your favorite items in one easy-to-access place. When you turn the device horizontally, the dock disappears below the fold.”

According to the Techcrunch report, Amazon will be pricing the tablet at $250.

MG Siegler says that a 7 inch tablet could be released in November and it will sport a capacitive touch screen. He says the appearance is very like the BlackBerry Playbook, which failed to ignite hearts and minds when it was released.

The report adds that a 10 inch version will be released next year. The version the journalist saw was a DVT unit (Design Verification Unit). They are not in production yet, but will be shortly.

The price point is interesting, because it is half the price of the market leading Apple iPad. As we had expected, the Amazon store is easy to access and is ‘always just one click away'.

Even though this is a pre production model, the operating system is said to be responsive which bodes well for the final, retail version.

The author didn't obviously get time to take the device apart, but he says that the processor seems to be single core, but that the 10 inch version due for release in 2012 will have a dual core chip. It makes sense at $250 to keep the hardware costs down as low as possible, and we would assume the 10 inch version will cost considerably more.

Storage is 6GB, with cloud access being one of the key points, for storing music and movie files. The report also adds that a 3G version will not be available at launch, but perhaps at a later date once deals are worked out with carriers.

You can read more over here. We are excited about this tablet, but Amazon have experience in the tablet market and the store infrastructure to back it all up.

Kitguru says: A challenger for the iPad? probably not, but it should sell well.

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