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Amazon’s 7-inch Kindle Fire, the tablet it lifted the lid on earlier today, isn’t available in the UK, an Amazon spokesperson has confirmed to us.
“The Fire is only in the US today,” they said, “but stay tuned for information about a UK launch.” So that suggests it won’t be too long before we are able to get our hands on one. Or so we hope.
The new Kindle Touch 3G also isn’t available on these shores, according to the Amazon UK website, so it seems we’ll have to wait for that too. The only one of the new line-up on the UK site is the keyboard-less device, known simply as Kindle, which can be yours for £89. But even that’s a pre-order, with stock expected on 12 October. And it’s a lot more than our American cousins will pay, because the US version will feature adverts.
It’s quite frustrating that Amazon hasn’t announced worldwide availability, particularly because the Kindle Fire looks like it could genuinely challenge the iPad 2. Let’s hope Amazon doesn’t decide to hike up that $200 price tag when it does get round to a UK launch.
The Fire runs a heavily modded version of Android, which was no great surprise, and comes with no camera, no microphone, and no 3G, which all help keep the price down.
The Kindle Touch 3G, meanwhile, is the company’s first touchscreen e-reader, and the good news is you won’t have to pay for 3G once you’ve bought it — just download books straight to it, as long as you’re in one of the 100 countries in which it works. The screen also uses infrared sensors, so you can poke it with anything you want, rather than just a non-gloved finger like on an iPad 2.
What do you think of Amazon leaving us out of most of the Kindle fun? Let us know, in your most elegiac prose, on our Facebook page.
