Monday, August 12, 2013

Upcoming Kindle Fire Tablet to Give Galaxy S4 Processor a Run for Its Money

Amazon’s Kindle Fire tablet had quickly rose to popularity when it had launched in the fall of 2011 with commendable specs and an affordable price of $199 when many tablets at the time cost in excess of $400 or $500. Due for a refresh this fall, Amazon is now said to debut its third generation 7-inch Kindle Fire tablet with a more powerful octa-core processor to compete against the Samsung Exynos 5 octa in that company’s international variant of the Galaxy S4 smartphone.
In keeping to its low price target for the 7-inch slate, it’s believed that Amazon likely won’t be using Samsung’s popular chipset. Instead, the company may be turning to MediaTek, according to a report on DigiTimes, with the more cost effective octa-core ARM-based CPU. Like the Exynos 5 octa, MediaTek’s MT8135 is actually a quad-core solution utilizing ARM Holdings‘ big.LITTLE architecture. With that design, the chip has four high-powered cores for performance intensive tasks and also four low-powered cores that get activated when idle or using less demanding applications. As such, neither MediaTek’s nor Samsung’s octa-core offerings can utilize all 8 cores at the same time.
kindle-fireMediaTek’s role in Amazon’s Kindle Fire plans are still unconfirmed, and given DigiTimes mixed track records on reporting on rumors in the past this information should be taken with a grain of salt. However, if accurate, MediaTek should be given a big boost given Amazon’s stature as the fourth largest tablet-maker in the industry.
The choice of MediaTek’s processor may be key in helping Amazon stay competitive in the low-price segment. Google recently released its second generation Nexus 7, also called the Nexus 7 2013, tablet in collaboration with Asus. Though the tablet costs $30 more this year at $230, Google upped the specs with a new full HD 1080p display and a quad-core Snapdragon S4 Pro processor from Qualcomm.
Part of the reason that Amazon is able to deliver its hardware at such a low price is that the company can still generate profits after the point of sales. Through its digital storefronts, Amazon sells digital content such as e-books, MP3s, TV shows and movies, magazines, and other content through its online stores.

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