Amazon's front-lit ebook reader, Kindle Paperwhite and its Kindle Fire HD tablets are now available for purchase on the company's Indian online store, Amazon.in and through more than one hundred retail outlets including Croma, Reliance Digital, E-Zone and Vijay Sales in cities such as Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chandigarh, Ahmedabad and Pune.
Orders placed for the ebook reader and tablets placed on Amazon.in will be fulfilled by Amazon and sold by Croma retail. The site mentions a shipping time of 2-4 days for most Delhi Pin Codes.
Amazon had announced(https://www.gadgets360.com/tablets/news/amazon-launches-kindle-fire-hd-range-of-tablets-in-india-378983) the availability of both the devices on June 13. Just to recap, the Wi-Fi version of the Kindle Paperwhite ebook reader has been priced at Rs. 10,999, while its Wi-Fi plus 3G version costs Rs. 13,999. Amazon has also revised the Kindle ebook reader's price in India. It is now available for Rs. 5,999, Rs.1,000 less than the Rs.6,999 price it was launched at originally, in August 2012.
The 16GB variants of the Kindle Fire HD and Kindle Fire HD 8.9 tablets are available for Rs. 15,999 and Rs. 21,999 respectively. The 32GB storage variants of the Kindle Fire HD and Kindle Fire HD 8.9 tablets are available for Rs. 18,999 and Rs. 25,999 respectively.
The Kindle Paperwhite, which was initially launched in October 2012, features a 6-inch Paperwhite display packing-in 212 pixels per inch and displaying 16 level grey scale. The Paperwhite display is essentially a front-lit display that guides light underneath an anti-glare layer and down toward the display, away from the reader's eyes, allowing readers to read with less eye fatigue and strain. Amazon claims that the e-reader offers 25 percent higher contrast for sharp, dark text and packs in 62 percent more pixels for higher resolution. The screen's brightness can be adjusted for reading in different light conditions. The Kindle Paperwhite sports a 2-point multi-touch display eliminating the need for physical buttons.
It comes with 2GB of internal storage space out of which 1.25GB is available to the user, capable of holding around 1100 books. It also offers free cloud storage for all content (books and magazines) purchased from Amazon.
Kindle Fire HD is a 7-inch tablet with 1280x800 display resolution that is powered by a 1.2GHz dual-core processor and Imagination SGX540 GPU. It weighs 395 grams and is powered by a 4400mAh battery rated at 11 hours of usage.
Kindle Fire HD 8.9, on the other hand, features an 8.9-inch display with a pixel density of 254 pixels per inch and a resolution of 1920x1200 pixels. It is powered by 1.5GHz dual-core processor and Imagination SGX544 GPU, weighs 567 grams and is powered by a 6000mAh battery rated at 10 hours of usage.
Both tablets come with 1GB of RAM, dual-band Wi-Fi, Dolby Audio with dual stereo speakers, Bluetooth 3.0, and are available in 16GB and 32GB variants.
The tablets run a highly customised version of Android 4.0.3 with apps available through Amazon's Appstore, instead of Google Play. Kindle Fire HD tablets can also consume content from Amazon's large library of audio, video and books content, though only books are available in India at this stage.