Amazon's Kindle Fire HD and HDX tablets have finally made it into Australian retail stores, available at Dick Smith and Big W from today.
The lower-end 7-inch Kindle Fire HD sports a 1280x800 resolution screen (216ppi), with a dual-core 1.5GHz processor and 10 hours of battery life. It's also aggressively priced at AU$189.
The Fire HDX range features two tablets — a 7 inch and an 8.9 inch. Both feature a quad-core Snapdragon 800 processor running at 2.2GHz, with a dedicated Adreno 330 GPU and long battery life — 11 hours of mixed use and 17 hours of reading.
The 7-inch HDX display has a 1920x1200 resolution with 323 ppi, while the 8.9 inch crams in 2560x1600 resolution at 339 ppi.
The Kindle Fire HDX 7 inch is AU$329 while the 8.9 inch is AU$429.
The tablets arrive as a part of a big push into Australia from Amazon. Today also sees the launch of a local Kindle Store where ebook purchases can be made in Australian dollars with Aussie authors highlighted, as well as a local arm of the Kindle Direct Publishing for Australian writers and publishers.
The Amazon app store will also feature Australian specific apps, such as Quickflix and I Heart Radio. The Appstore will, of course, be preloaded on locally available tablets.