Amazon Kindle Fire Teardown
by Kristian Vättö on November 16, 2011 11:40 AM ESTThanks iFixit for the image!
As we work on our Kindle Fire review, iFixit dissected Amazon's first entry into the tablet space. The internals aren't surprising - there's an OMAP 4430 SoC and 512MB of LPDDR2 memory. Like most ARM based tablets, the Fire's motherboard size pales in comparison to the beefy 28Wh battery.
It is important to note that Amazon was able to hit a $199 price point on the Kindle Fire without sacrificing on the SoC side. The OMAP 4430 is still one of the highest performing SoCs available on the market today. While that won't last for long, it does show that there is definitely room below the $499 target for many tablet players. The reality is that most manufacturers look at tablets as a way to increase their profit margins. If they accept the possibility that tablets may not be the key to higher margins, we may just see wider spread adoption of non-Apple tablets.
| Tablet Specification Comparison | ||||||
| Amazon Kindle Fire | Apple iPad 2 | BlackBerry PlayBook | Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9 | |||
| Dimensions | 190 x 120 x 11.4mm | 241.2 x 185.7 x 8.8mm | 194 x 130 x 10mm | 230.9 x 157.8 x 8.6mm | ||
| Display | 7-inch 1024 x 600 IPS | 9.7-inch 1024 x 768 IPS | 7-inch 1024 x 600 | 8.9-inch 1280 x 800 PLS | ||
| Weight | 413g | 601g | 425g | 447g | ||
| Processor | 1GHz TI OMAP 4430 (2 x Cortex A9) | 1GHz Apple A5 (2 x Cortex A9) | 1GHz TI OMAP 4430 (2 x Cortex A9) | 1GHz NVIDIA Tegra 2 (2 x Cortex A9) | ||
| Memory | 512MB | 512MB | 1GB | 1GB | ||
| Storage | 8GB | 16GB | 16GB | 16GB | ||
| Pricing | $199 | $499 | $499 | $469 | ||
Check our Kindle Fire announcement article for our initial thoughts on the tablet and iFixit for the complete teardown!
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
4 Comments
View All Comments
Alchemy69 - Wednesday, November 16, 2011 - link
Tore down? Really?smokedturkey - Thursday, November 17, 2011 - link
FAILughmas - Thursday, November 17, 2011 - link
Check our Kindle Fire announcement article for our initial thoughts on the tablet and iFixit for the complete teardown!read
Belard - Friday, November 18, 2011 - link
Other than memory, the kindle has the same gpu but no cameras and doesn't even cost half as much as rim's playbook. Wonder who wins between those two.....