Amazon Kindle Fire HD 8.9 is Good, But No iPad Killer [REVIEW]

Unboxing the Kindle Fire HD 8.9

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Amazon expands its tablet sights with the bigger, more powerful Kindle Fire HD 8.9. Can it compete against Apple‘s iPad?

If there’s one company that deserves credit for reigniting the iPad competitor market, it’s Amazon. Despite some bugs and an overall blah design, its 7-inch Kindle Fire was the first Android tablet that made sense to consumers who gobbled it up to help the Fire grab 50% of the Android tablet market in just 6 months.

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That tablet essentially opened the flood gates for a new set of ever-more-powerful 7-inchers from, notably, Barnes & Noble and Google. All three companies have already updated their 7-inch offerings to more powerful components and higher-resolutions screens. They’re all still running Android, though Amazon and Barnes & Noble choose to hide the Google OS behind smarter and much more consumer-friendly interfaces.

All this led Apple to finally enter the mid-sized tablet space with the iPad Mini. It’s easily the best-looking tablet of the bunch, but also $ 120 more expensive than its nearest competitor.

The more interesting development, though, is Amazon‘s (and Barnes & Noble‘s) decision to go toe-to-toe with Apple’s full-size iPad and launch the Amazon Kindle Fire HD 8.9 (in 4G LTE and WiFi-only). The move is akin to a middle weight boxer putting on the pounds to take on the Heavyweight world champion. Amazon’s Kindle Fire HD is slightly smaller (the iPad is 9.7-inches), lighter (567g vs. 625g), cheaper ($ 369 for 32 GB model vs. $ 599 for the iPad 4th Gen — Amazon subsidizes with sleep-state ads, that I do not mind) and overall somewhat less powerful. In order to win the battle, the 8.9-inch Kindle Fire HD better be pretty nimble on its feet, while able to throw that all important knockout punch.

Short version of this story: the Kindle Fire HD 8.9 does some serious damage, but the iPad 4th Gen gets the decision and retains the tablet leader title.

The Kindle Fire HD 8.9 is by no means a failure. In many ways, it’s as good as the smaller Kindle Fire HD, but throughout my tests I noticed odd bugs and glitches (which should all be fixable by software) and a somewhat disturbing lack of power that’s especially obvious when you put the Fire HD 8.9 next to the iPad 4th Gen

What It Is

If you’ve never seen an iPad and someone handed you the Kindle Fire HD .9, you’d likely say its jet-black, soft-to-the-touch plastic body felt good in your hands and was more than effective at all the core tasks (reading, game playing, e-mail, web browsing).

Design-wise, the 8.9 device looks exactly like the 7-inch model, complete with the too-hard to find volume and power buttons. There are no other physical buttons on this device, but Amazon chooses to hide the few it has by making them the exact same color as the chassis and flush with the body. Every time I use the tablet I do the “where’s the damn button” dance, rotating the Kindle Fire HD round and round until I feel the buttons (since I can barely see them).

I have applauded Barnes & Noble for putting the physical “N” home button right on the face of their Nook HD. Bravo for having the guts to do this. Amazon apparently looks at Apple’s iPad home button and thinks to have anything similar would be seen as “copying” the Cupertino hardware giant, when instead they should realize that it works, consumers like it and tablets without it are at a distinct disadvantage.

Amazon’s interface has you make do with a virtual, slide-out home button that is always available. Problem is, I found times when it wasn’t available. When I played Spider-Man and Asphalt 7, the tiny little left-had bar would disappear and I couldn’t exit the game unless I hit the sleep/power button.

The rest of the Kindle Fire HD 8.9′s body is solid and unremarkable (if you read my Kindle fire HD 7 review, then you know exactly what to expect.). Like the iPad 4th Gen, the Kindle Fire HD 8.9 has a front-facing 720p-capable camera. It’s useful for capturing video, snapping 1 Megapixel images and, probably most important, Skype video chats. Skype has built a fairly sharp-looing Kindle Fire app, though the design doesn’t fully fit the larger 8.9-inch screen. Skype just updated its Android app for better tablet viewing and hopefully, we’ll see this update hit the Kindle Fire HD 8.9 as well.

The iPad also has an HD rear-facing camera. The Kindle fire HD 8.9 does not (Barnes & Noble leave out cameras altogether)

Not Packing a Punch

As a large-screen high-resolution tablet (though iPad’s 2048×1536 retina display beats it), the Kindle Fire HD 8.9 offers plenty of attractive screen real estate for web browsing, book and magazine reading and games. But the results can be mixed. Silk, Amazon‘s custom web browser, was occasionally less than responsive and games, though, they ran well, never looked half as good as they do on the considerably more expensive iPad 4.

Granted, you can’t always find the same high-quality immersive action games on both Android and iOS, but Asphalt 7 Heat is a notable exception and it throws the performance differences between the two tablets into stark contrast. Game play is equally responsive on both platforms: the Kindle Fire HD 8.9’s accelerometer reads my moves just as well as the iPad.

The graphics on the Kindle Fire HD, however, are reduced to blobs and blocks (palm trees without distinct leaves, buildings without discernible windows) . The iPad’s quad-core graphics simply overmatch the Kindle Fire. I have never, for example, seen an iPad draw the game as I was playing, as I did when I tried out The Amazing Spider-Man.

Additionally, I experienced more than my share of crashes with games and even magazine apps like Vanity Fair.

The Good

Not everyone, however, will compare the Kindle Fire HD 8.9 to the iPad. Some will see the $ 299 entry-level price point (for the 16 GB model) and appreciate the power, flexibility and utility of this device. Like all Fire’s before it, the Kindle Fire HD 8.9 makes it easy to consume mass quantities of content. Nearly every menu option: Games, Apps, Books, Music, Videos, Newsstand, puts you just one click away from shopping for fresh content. If you have an Amazon account (and who doesn’t) your desired book, music or movie is just a click away. Plus, you can still easily store any of it locally, and worry about running out of storage space, or in the cloud, and never worry about space or accessibility—you can get to that purchased Kindle content from any Kindle app or registered Amazon device.

Watching movies on the tablet is a pleasure. I streamed a couple through Amazon Prime; they looked good on the 1920 x 1200 screen and the Dolby Stereo speakers produced sharp, loud, almost room-filling sound—an impressive feat not even the iPad can match.

The Kindle Fire HD 8.9 also includes a mini-HDMI-out port, which prompted me to connect the tablet to my 47-inch LED HDTV so we could watch Disney’s Brave. Yes, I had to get up and tap on the Kindle screen each time I wanted to pause and restart the move, but otherwise, I was pretty impressed with how the Kindle handled the task.

Obviously I yearn for an Apple Airplay-like feature on Android tablets (rumor has it one is coming), but this is the next, best thing.

There isn’t a lot to say about the Kindle Fire HD 8.9-inch interface that I did not say in the Kindle Fire HD 7 review. I will note, however, that the increased real estate makes the trademark task carousel seem almost too big. Icons for everything from your recently played Spider-Man game to magazine apps, books and Web sites all sit side-by-side-by side. Some, like book covers, look gorgeous.

Others like a broken web-page link look stupid. Worse yet, none of them have labels, which can occasionally make it hard to identify which app or task you’re looking at. I’m just not sure this interface metaphor is sustainable.

Personally I prefer either the clean consistent look of iOS, or the uber-user friendly, family-oriented Nook HD profile-based one. Amazon may want to take a hard look at those and start over.

Staying Connected

The Kindle Fire HD 8.9 is also Amazon’s first cellular-based tablet. That fact puts it even more squarely in competition with the iPad (which obviously has always had 3G models and now offers blazing fast 4G LTE ones as well on all major carriers).

Amazon’s mobile broadband plans are a little more conservative, with just the AT&T 4G LTE option (the 32 GB 4G model that I tested lists for $ 499, which is still $ 224 less than a comparable iPad 4th Gen).

In my experience, the connectivity is superfast and fairly ubiquitous. Amazon‘s $ 49 (a year) flat fee plan is attractive, but with a cap of 250MB per month of data, it’s unlikely it will satisfy the most data-hungry users. If you do need more data, users can also get 3GB and 5GB data plans directly from AT&T on the device.

At press time, Amazon had not enabled streaming video over LTE. Having it sounds nice, but even with the most generous data plans, streaming video would eat it up faster than you can say, “I’m streaming Back to the Future in HD over 4G LTE on my Kindle fire HD!”

The reality for most users is that WiFi is plentiful and you’ll be hard pressed to find a spot where you can’t connect for free or a small one-off fee. It’s the reason Barnes & Noble’s line of HD Nooks do not include a cellular option.

Review continues after FreeTime Gallery

FreeTime

Kindle HD FreeTime Start

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Perhaps the best new addition to the Kindle Fire family is not a piece of hardware or new component, but the new FreeTime app. Amazon put a lot of loving care into this parental control interface, but almost mucks the whole thing up by hiding the tool under an app that you have to scroll down to (or search) to find. By contrast profiles and age and content controls are baked into the Barnes & Noble Nook HD in a way that makes them impossible to ignore.

Even so, once you do access FreeTime, I think you’ll be pleased with the level of control it gives you. I added test profiles for my two children and then hand-picked every app and piece of content they could access. I was also able to block broadband mobile and even set time limits for access to content and overall screen viewing time (on a per profile basis). The set-up is a bit wonky and it bizarrely switches between landscape and profile screens, but I still applaud the effort. It would make sense for Amazon to move FreeTime into a device set-up screen. If the user has no additional family members or kids using the device, they can easily skip it.

To Buy or Not to Buy

Amazon’s expansive content and shopping ecosystem has always been a strong draw and it’s just as good in this large screen tablet as it was in the very first Kindle Fire. Still, you have to compare it with the equally strong iOS ecosystem, which is no slouch in the content shopping department. Apple doesn’t connect you as seamlessly to physical products, but there’s nothing difficult about shopping on Amazon.com via your iPad. It’s also notable that tablet competitor Barnes & Noble has added movie and TV viewing, rental and purchase.

Ultimately, all of these tablets are offering more and more of the same content options, apps, and features. The decision will likely come down to price, app selection, interface and overall ease of use. The Amazon Kindle fire HD 8.9 scores well on all of these, but does not always lead.

For the price, it’s a great value, but I want Amazon to focus on hardware and interface design for the next big update. Then, they may get my full endorsement.

This story originally published on Mashable here.

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Spotlight on Thanksgiving: Stars Who Love to Cook

Look Who's Cooking

By Anna Kleyman

"What's cooking, good looking?" may just be the perfect question for some A-list celebs who like to get their cook on in the kitchen. To celebrate Thanksgiving, we're counting down Hollywood's kitchen MVPs including Jennifer Aniston, Blake Lively, Gwyneth Paltrow and more.

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Seaside Heights mayor considering leaving roller coaster submerged by Sandy as 'tourist attraction'

AP

A man walks on the beach as a rollercoaster that once sat on the Funtown Pier in Seaside Heights, NJ rests in the ocean.

SEASIDE HEIGHTS, NJ — The remains of a roller coaster that was knocked off a New Jersey amusement pier by Superstorm Sandy and partially submerged in the Atlantic Ocean may be left there as a tourist attraction.

Seaside Heights Mayor Bill Akers tells WNBC-TV in New York that officials have not made a decision on whether to tear down the coaster. But the mayor says he's working with the Coast Guard to see if the coaster is stable enough to leave it alone, because he believes it would make "a great tourist attraction."

Meanwhile, efforts to rebuild the storm-ravaged town are continuing.

Demolition crews have removed the resort's damaged boardwalk. And Akers says construction on a new boardwalk should begin in January and be ready by Memorial Day.

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1 dead, 3 injured in Bahamas helicopter crash

NASSAU, Bahamas – Officials say a helicopter has crashed in an upscale Bahamas resort, killing one U.S. citizen and injuring at least three others.

Miami Herald news partner WFOR CBS 4 reported one of the survivors was Jeffrey Soffer, owner the Fontainebleau resort in Miami Beach.

North Abaco parliamentarian Renardo Curry says at least four Americans were on the helicopter when it crashed Thursday morning in Baker’s Bay Golf & Ocean Club on Great Guana Cay.

Police have not released the identities of the passengers or other details about the crash.

Curry says the helicopter was attempting to land at Baker’s Bay when a wind gust sent the aircraft spiraling.

Former Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham says one passenger died and three survivors are being treated at a clinic. He says their injuries are apparently not life threatening.

Baker’s Bay is a playground for millionaires located about 150 miles off Florida’s eastern coast.

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Conservative Christian group pushed reinstating Miami-Dade commission prayer

The Miami-Dade County Commission is poised next month to reinstate nondenominational prayers to kick off their meetings, after a group of commissioners approved the policy shift last week.

But the change was not spontaneous: The conservative Christian group pushing to restore prayer has been laying the groundwork for nearly a year and a half.

The Christian Family Coalition saw an opportunity to promote its agenda after Commissioner Katy Sorenson retired in late 2010, according Anthony Verdugo, the group’s executive director. Sorenson had been one of two board members who years earlier — in 2004, Verdugo said — changed the county’s practice to begin meetings with a moment of silence instead of a prayer.

Sorenson was replaced by the more conservative Lynda Bell, whom the Coalition had endorsed. There was other commission turnover as well.

Before then, “we didn’t feel we had enough votes on the commission to get it through,” Verdugo said. “We didn’t want it to be a divisive item for the community — we don’t need that.”

Because expressions of faith in public meetings may turn off or offend some in the community, the proposal before the commission envisions rotating religious leaders of different faiths to give invocations. The plan does not address people who do not belong to a particular religion or do not believe in God, though no one on the board or in the audience will be required to participate.

There is a price tag: It will cost the county clerk’s office about $22,000 to compile the names of religious congregations in a database, and another $4,000 a year for technical support and maintenance, according to an estimate provided to the commission by Mayor Carlos Gimenez’s office.

The story behind the proposal began last year, when the Coalition seized on its political opening.

It held a Saturday session to train some 40 people the group called “citizen lobbyists.” They were instructed on the county’s history with prayer and on laws regulating the practice.

The corps members then reached out to their commissioners. Among them was Sybel W. Lee, a 68-year-old self-described “concerned mother, grandmother and activist” who said she spoke to Commissioner Audrey Edmonson’s aide about the importance of prayer.

“Look at the harm the absence of an invocation has caused in this country,” Lee said. An invocation is about reflection, she noted, “not to impose your beliefs and ideology on other people.”

But the Coalition still needed a commissioner to take the lead on reinstating prayer. Though invocations had been eliminated without legislation — the commission just changed its meeting practices — there did not appear to be political will on the board to switch back without an ordinance.

Though the Coalition had an ally in Bell, the former mayor of Homestead, she was now representing a more moderate county commission district and was not the most likely candidate to shepherd the legislation.

Instead, the Coalition turned to Commissioner Jose “Pepe” Diaz.

“Honestly, it’s always been on my mind,” Diaz said. “Why can we not have prayer like everywhere else, like in Congress, in the state?”

Diaz said the county attorney’s office toiled to make the ordinance inclusive.

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PlayStation Mobile Now Lets PS Vita Owners Create Their Own Games

Think you (or someone you know) has what it takes to write games for the PlayStation Vita? Sony just opened up its PlayStation Mobile game store to anyone who wants in. All you need is a half-decent Windows PC and a Vita, and the cash for a $ 99 developer fee — the same yearly price Apple charges.

​How PlayStation Mobile fits in

PlayStation Mobile isn’t the same thing as the PlayStation Store, where you can buy most PlayStation games and downloadable content. It’s more like a separate department that’s only on the PlayStation Vita and on PlayStation Certified Android devices like Sony’s smartphones and tablets.

In a nutshell, it’s Sony’s version of Xbox Live Indie Arcade, except that it’s for portable PlayStation consoles instead of home Xbox ones. It’s where small, indie studios can get their work published and featured, and where PlayStation Vita owners can look for unique, inexpensive game titles.

​How developers can get started

Game developers can start with PlayStation Mobile by registering on its developer site. After that, they download the PlayStation Mobile SDK (software development kit), and get to work on their games. Third-party software like the free Blender 3D modeling program can be used to create in-game art assets, while the SDK itself is powered by the open source Mono version of C#, the same programming language used by Xbox Live Indie Arcade’s XNA toolkit.

​How PlayStation Mobile compares to other game and app markets

For starters, the $ 99 annual fee and the cost of a PlayStation Vita or PlayStation Certified device put it right up there with Apple’s App Store in terms of up-front expense, except that you don’t have to buy a Mac to write things for it. This is a lot more than the $ 25 one-time fee to get in to the Google Play store, which you can use pretty much any computer and Android device to write for. On the other hand, anyone who’s considering writing PlayStation Vita games probably already owns a Vita to begin with.

Developers aren’t allowed to write non-game apps for PlayStation Mobile, unlike with most markets. Pretty much the only apps seen on the Vita so far are official licensed ones like YouTube and Flickr, while PlayStation Certified devices running the Android OS get their apps from the Google Play store anyhow.

Perhaps the strangest restriction? Developers don’t get to set their own games’ price. They instead specify a “wholesale price,” as though they were selling their games to Sony, and it decides how much to sell them for. In essence, the company chooses its own profit margin on a per-game basis, unlike most app markets’ 70/30 split. It also seems to be able to decide when and whether games go on sale.

​Success stories?

Rami Ismail told “The Story of Super Crate Box” on the PlayStation Blog, explaining how he and a fan managed to bring an iOS game that he’d already made to the PlayStation Vita on very short notice. He said the game “feels right at home” on the portable console, while Joystiq’s JC Fletcher calls the Vita port “the definitive version.” As for whether it’s selling well or not, though, we may have to wait to find out.

Jared Spurbeck is an open-source software enthusiast, who uses an Android phone and an Ubuntu laptop PC. He has been writing about technology and electronics since 2008.

Gaming News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Kimora Lee Simmons and Djimon Hounsou Split

Though never married, Djimon Hounsou and Kimora Lee Simmons are ending their relationship, according to People.com.

PICS: The 10 Most Shocking Breakups in Hollywood

Hounsou's rep tells the news source that the couple has "officially separated after 5 1/2 years."

The actor, 48, reportedly met Simmons, 42, in February 2007 after her split from hip hop mogul Russell Simmons.

They have one child together, three-year-old son Kenzo Lee Hounsou.

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Under-equipped authorities used canoes from stores & Boy Scout camp to rescue people on Staten Island during Sandy

Calling all boats!

Under-equipped cops and firefighters on Sandy-battered Staten Island were in such desperate need for boats to save people from flooding homes that they took recreational canoes from an outdoor sporting goods store, borrowed rowboats from a city park and commandeered more from a Boy Scout camp, the Post has learned.

The police and fire departments on the hard-hit borough were inundated with 911 calls for help the night of Oct. 29 and did not have enough city-issued resources to perform all the rescues required, multiple sources said.

Several quick-thinking cops rushed over to Dick’s Sporting Goods at the Staten Island Mall in New Springville shortly after it closed around 9:30 p.m. – as the supserstorm was bearing down in full force – and were greeted by a sympathetic night manager as they banged on the door, sources added.

“It was done right after the storm surge came in,” said one police source. “It was done out of sheer necessity. I don’t think anybody expected what they saw that night.”

The manager let the cops take three 14-foot canoes off a display wall, as well as paddles and lifejackets – a total haul worth close to $2,000, according to one store employee.

“We at DICK'S Sporting Goods were proud that we could assist in providing supplies to the NYPD so that they could reach those affected by Superstorm Sandy,” said Chief Marketing Officer Lauren Hobart.

The NYPD has previously said that the borough’s Emergency Service Unit ventured out into the whipping winds and strong currents with only a large zodiac boat with a 40 hp motor, an inflatable zodiac boat without a motor, and a Yamaha jet ski.

Two metal jon boats weren’t used because cops feared being electrocuted by downed power lines.

However, a source said that the bigger concern among Island cops was that rotted plugs in the bottoms of some older NYPD skiffs were leaking, forcing cops to bail out the boats as they saved residents.

“Guys were tossing out buckets of water while helping families step into the boat. Just imagine what that must’ve looked like,” said another source.

Meanwhile, Island firefighters were equipped with seven boats the night Sandy hit, as well as seven water rescue units each staffed with six firefighters, said a Fire Department spokesman.

Still, firefighters found themselves in need of extra boats and reached out to the borough’s Parks Department headquarters for assistance.

Staffers grabbed all the rowboats from the concession stand in Clove Lakes Park in Sunnyside, loaded them onto department pickups and delivered them to firefighters braving the dangerous rising waters in Cedar Grove Beach, according to Parks officials.

“People were in need and our Parks staff just jumped into action, not even thinking about their own safety,” said Parks manager Bonnie Williams. All the boats were returned the next day.

Firefighters also commandeered two boats from the Boy Scout’s Pouch Camp facility, said senior ranger Gil Schweiger.

Schweiger added that he and several staffers also drove around that deadly night towing a trailer loaded with four boats and met firefighters at several disaster scenes to aid in rescues.

“We went to Dongan Hills and saved 127 people and their pets. All people living on Naughton Avenue, Seaver Avenue and Slater Boulevard, right near the marshes,” said Schweiger.

The revelations about the city’s lack of boat preparedness for first-responders comes two days after The Post reported how callers to the city’s 911 system were met with busy signals, recorded messages and ill-prepared operators during the storm, which ravaged swaths of the city and led to 43 deaths.

The failures have led Public Advocate Bill de Blasio and Councilman Elizabeth Crowley (D-Queens), chairwoman of the fire and criminal justice committee, to call for an investigation.

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Ticket sales up 16 percent for auto show

Miami Beach’s Miami International Auto Show reported a 16 percent increase in ticket sales for the Miami Beach event held in November.

The auto expo does not release full attendance figures, and won’t say exactly how many people came to the 10-day event, which ended Nov. 18. A show spokeswoman said the overall attendance was roughly 600,000 people, but a large number of attendees came using free tickets handed out as promotions.

Now in its 42nd year, the event is held at the Miami Beach Convention Center.

DOUGLAS HANKS

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Miami receives mixed bag of bond ratings

Don’t look to Wall Street to sort out Miami’s complicated finances.

On Tuesday, Moody’s Investors Service issued a negative outlook for some of the city’s outstanding bond obligations, and gave a below-average rating to a bond issue expected to close next month.

Fitch Ratings, meanwhile, upgraded the outlook for the outstanding bond issues from negative to stable. But it, too, gave a subpar grade to the new bonds.

The mixed bag of ratings came one week after Budget Director Danny Alfonso announced that Miami closed the fiscal year with an unexpected $37 million surplus. The city’s computer system put the figure at $45 million, but Alfonso said several transactions had yet to post.

Fitch called the year-end surplus “impressive,” and noted that Miami had managed to boost its overall reserves to $54 million, or about 11 percent of spending.

“I’m extremely pleased that we’ve improved” our rating, City Manager Johnny Martinez said Tuesday. “They’ve been watching the things that we’ve been doing as far as building our fund balance and living within our means.”

Governments sell bonds on Wall Street as a way to borrow money, with bond buyers collecting interest and principal payments from the issuers in the same way a bank makes money off home mortgages. The ratings reflect the likelihood that any issuer will continue making bond payments, with a lower rating suggesting a higher risk of default.

Fitch assigned the city’s latest bond issue a BBB+ rating — a below-average grade for a municipal security.

The $45 million bond issue, which was approved by the City Commission Monday and will likely be sold in early December, will pay off a short-term loan that financed Miami’s share of the PortMiami tunnel dig.

Fitch Analyst Michael Rinaldi said the committee had expressed concern over recent turnover in the city’s finance department.

Said Martinez: “I wish the rating had been a little bit higher.”

Moody’s also assigned a mediocre grade to the tunnel bonds — an A3 rating — and described the outlook as negative.

“The negative outlook reflects the city’s ongoing challenges to control high fixed costs, uncertainties associated with key managerial turnover and the ongoing [U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission] investigation,” Moody’s analysts wrote.

Earlier in the year, Moody’s put Miami under review for a potential credit downgrade after the SEC announced intentions to file civil fraud charges against the city. The review was expanded when several key finance officials resigned their posts.

At the end of the review, the ratings stayed consistent, Moody’s spokesman David Jacobson said.

On the whole, Commission Vice Chairman Marc Sarnoff said, the news was positive.

“The needle is moving in the right direction,” Sarnoff said. “The gas tank is starting to get full.”

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