Via a press release, Amazon today announced the latest update to their Fire tablet family that comes with one software inclusion many will greatly appreciate. This update is for the Fire HD 8, and the new software is Alexa.
Yes, that’s right. Starting with the new Fire HD 8, Amazon’s brining their highly-favored voice assistant Alexa to their lineup of tablets. This lets you control your music playback, check the weather, send an email, order something off Amazon, and more. And thanks to third-party development, Fire tablets can also benefit from an app’s integration with Alexa to provide a better user experience. In the coming months, Amazon will also release version 5.4 of Fire OS to bring Alexa to the Fire HD 10 and last year’s 7-inch Fire tablet. There’s no mention of the Fire HD 6 anywhere, so it’s safe to assume that this tablet won’t be getting the new voice assistant capabilities.
Also found in the new Fire HD 8 tablet is 1.5GB of RAM. This is a 50% increase over the previous model’s 1GB. There’s also a 4750mAh battery that Amazon says will last you 12 hours on a single charge. In addition, customers will have the option to pick up the new Fire HD 8 in either 16 or 32GB of storage which is expandable via microSD card up to an extra 200GB.
All in all, this new tablet is pretty great, and it gets even better when you check out the price. Surprisingly, Amazon will be selling the new Fire HD 8 for just $89.99 on their website. This is a decrease of $60 from the previous price of the 8-inch tablet. It also costs just $40 more than the 7-inch Fire. However, for the money, you’re getting a 1280×800 HD display, a 1.3GHz quad-core processor, 1.5GB of RAM, and 12 hours of battery.
September 21st will be when you can pick up the new tablet, while customers can begin preordering now.
> Preorder the new Fire HD 8 tablet from Amazon for $89.99
Source: Amazon
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