Sometimes we get to see two very unlikely suspects get in to brawl with each other for something. We are used to expect the usual suspects to fight, to brawl, and to compete with each other, but when two unlikely suspects fight, we find it rather interesting. What we have here today is such an occurrence. Lenovo and Amazon are in two completely different industries. It is true that any technical industry will have overlapping components, but Amazon and Lenovo had infinitesimally small overlapping if not nothing. Amazon was in the service industry with the popular Amazon store and cloud storage along with reading devices and rest of the portfolio. Lenovo, on the other hand, was in laptop and desktop market peacefully coexisting with Amazon and their products. There were certain instances where Amazon Cloud Storage was offered as a perk for Lenovo laptops. However with Lenovo releasing a budget tablet in to the market, the thin layer of ice has broken and fights for market share have begun.
Amazon Kindle Fire is one of the much adored budget tablet among an uncanny lot offering some abnormal combinations of hardware and software. Amazon would sure concentrate on keeping it that way with the introduction of Amazon Kindle Fire HD to the market. There are several other tablets that can compete with Kindle Fire HD, and Lenovo IdeaTab 2107A is one of it. Information about the IdeaTab A2107A is still flowing in, but with what we know and speculated, it’ll give a good fight to Fire HD and have a bite from the big Apple Amazon is aiming at in the upcoming holiday season. Let us discuss what we know about these devices individually and move on to a lengthy comparison.
Amazon Kindle Fire HD Review
Amazon lists that Kindle Fire HD has the most advanced 7 inch display ever. It features a resolution of 1280 x 800 pixels in a high definition LCD display that seems to be vibrant. The display panel is IPS, hence offers vivid colors, and with Amazon’s new polarized filter overlay on top of the display panel, you are bound to have wider viewing angles, as well. Amazon has laminated the touch sensor and LCD panel together with a single layer of glass reduces the effective screen glare. Kindle Fire HD comes with exclusive custom Dolby audio in dual-driver stereo speakers with auto optimization software for crisp balanced audio.
Amazon Kindle Fire HD is powered by 1.2GHz dual core processor on top of TI OMAP 4460 chipset with PowerVR SGX GPU. This sleek slate has 1GB of RAM to support the processor. Amazon claims that this setup is much faster than Nvidia Tegra 3 mounted devices although we need to do some benchmarking tests in order to verify that. Amazon also boasts of featuring the fastest Wi-Fi device which they claim is 41% faster than new iPad. Kindle Fire HD is renowned as the first tablet featuring dual Wi-Fi antennas with Multiple In / Multiple Out (MIMO) technology enabling enhanced bandwidth capabilities. With the dual band support, your Kindle Fire HD can automatically switch between the less congested band of 2.4GHz and 5GHz. The 7 inch edition doesn’t seem to feature GSM connectivity, which may be problematic if you’re in an area where Wi-Fi networks aren’t frequent to come by. However, with new devices like Novatel Mi-Wi, this can be easily compensated.
Amazon Kindle Fire HD will feature Amazon ‘X-Ray’ feature which used to be available in ebooks. This would enable you to tap the screen while a movie is playing and get the complete list of actors in the scene and you can further explore those using IMDB records right in your screen. This is a pretty cool and solid feature to implement inside a movie. Amazon has also enhanced the ebook and audio book capabilities by introducing immersive reading, which enables you to read a book and hear the narration of it at the same time. This is available for almost 15000 ebook audiobook couple according to Amazon website. This merged together with Amazon Whispersync for Voice would do wonders if you are a book lover. For instance, if you were reading and went to the kitchen to prepare the dinner, you’ll have to ditch the book for a while, but with Whispersync, your Kindle Fire HD would narrate the book for you while you’re making your dinner and you can come right back to the book after dinner enjoying the flow of story the whole time. Similar experiences are offered by Whispersync for Movies, Books and Games. Amazon has included a front facing HD camera that enables you to keep in touch using custom skype application and Kindle Fire HD offers a deep Facebook integration, as well. The web experience is said to be ultra-fast with the improved Amazon Silk browser that comes with the assurance of 30% reduction in page load times.
The storage starts from 16GB for Amazon Kindle Fire HD, but you can live with the internal storage since Amazon offers free unlimited cloud storage for all your Amazon content. Kindle FreeTime applications offer the parents with a chance to give a personalized experience for their children. It can limit children from using different applications for different durations and supports multiple profiles for multiple kids. We are positive that this is going to be a favorable feature for all the parents out there. Amazon guarantees 11 hours of battery life for Kindle Fire HD which is really great. This version of tablet is offered at $199 which is a great bargain for this killer slate.
Lenovo IdeaTab A2107A Review
Lenovo IdeaTab A2107A is a 7 inch tablet that is more or less like Amazon Kindle Fire. It features a resolution of 1024 x 600 pixels and is powered by 1GHz dual core processor on MediaTek MTK6575 chipset with PowerVR SGX 531 GPU and 1GB of RAM. The version we are talking about is with the 3G connectivity whereas the Wi-Fi only version has 512MB of RAM. The operating system is Android v4.0.4 ICS, and we hope there will be an upgrade to Jelly Bean soon. It is slender, but a bit to the heftier side of the spectrum scoring a thickness of 11.5mm and dimensions of 192 x 122mm. However, Lenovo has made it refreshingly light at 400g which makes it a pleasure to hold on to its smooth matte back plate.
Lenovo boasts IdeaTab A2107A to have professional level GPS support deeming that it can lock the location in 10 seconds top which may be an attractive option. It comes with a 2MP camera on the back and 0.3MP camera on the front that can be used for video conferencing. In terms of storage, there will be three versions having 4GB, 8GB and 16GB of storage all with the option to expand using microSD card up to 32GB. It is a rugged tablet which is stronger and more resistant to falls and bruises than your regular tab with its roll cage enclosure. It has Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n connectivity as well as 3G connectivity enabling you to use internet seamlessly without any connectivity issues. It also has micro USB support and built-in radio element. The tablet aims at 8 hours stretch from a single charge. The battery is said to be 3500mAh but no official indication on that either. Lenovo has been silent about the price and the release information as well although we are hoping the tablet will be released sometime in September 2012.
A Brief Comparison Between Amazon Kindle Fire HD and Lenovo IdeaTab A2107A
• Amazon Kindle Fire HD is powered by 1.2GHz dual core processor on top of TI OMAP 4460 chipset with PowerVR SGX GPU while Lenovo IdeaTab A2107A is powered by 1GHz MTL Cortex A9 Dual Core processor with PowerVR SGX 531 and 1GB of RAM.
• Amazon Kindle Fire HD has 7 inch HD LCD capacitive touchscreen display featuring a resolution of 1280 x 800 pixels while Lenovo IdeaTab A2107A has 7 inch capacitive touchscreen featuring a resolution of 1024 x 600 pixels.
• Amazon Kindle Fire HD features a HD camera in the front for video conferencing while Lenovo IdeaTab A2107A has 2MP camera on the back and 0.3MP camera on the front for video conferencing.
• Amazon Kindle Fire HD is bigger, thinner yet lighter (193 x 137.2mm / 10.1mm / 394g) than Lenovo IdeaTab A2107A (192 x 122mm / 11.5mm / 400g).
Conclusion
Amazon Kindle Fire HD is a clear winner here in terms of performance as well as the display and screen resolution. It has a better 1.2GHz dual core processor compared to the 1GHz dual core featured in IdeaTab A2107A. As you can see, Amazon is offering some strong incentives in order to lure the customers to their nest. Let us look at how Amazon can offer this slate at this price. Amazon’s business strategy in Kindle Fire HD is to offer hardware as a service. Kindle Fire HD is integral for customers to benefit from the services offered by Amazon. For instance, Amazon offers the X-Ray features for movies and ebooks which is a very cool way of visualizing the content of both media elements as a service and Kindle Fire HD is the hardware component that facilitates it. Amazon also has its own app store offering a variety of niche applications and games that are optimized for Kindle Fire. Additions like action figures from the games featured in app store would count as a strong motivation, to buy those games where Kindle Fire HD can be considered as the hardware component enabling this service.
I’ve been talking about Kindle Fire HD all along, but what does Lenovo IdeaTab A2107A has to offer? Well, it offers the genuine Android experience which is not available in Fire HD since it has a heavily stripped Android kernel which cleverly hides the scents of Android from the UI. Apart from that, IdeaTab A2107A is a tablet with moderate performance and will act as a good companion to you. Hence we think it’s up to you to choose which model you prefer and go for it.