Amazon Kindle Fire 7-inch Android tablet to cost $199

Summary: While other publications were diligently live-blogging Amazon’s big tablet event on Wednesday (28 September 2011), Bloomberg reported that the online retailer will launch a 7-inch Kindle Fire tablet at a retail price $199.

Bloomberg reported today (28 September 2011) that Amazon will be launching a 7-inch Kindle Fire tablet running a customised version of Android and that it will sell for $199.

When Engadget picked up on the story they also posted press shots of the device, noting the striking similarity to the BlackBerry PlayBook in their Twitter feed.

At the time of writing, various publications including Engadget and Ars Technica, were still live-blogging from the event.

Though Amazon was yet to officially unveil the Kindle Fire, the live blogs reported that the company  announced the Kindle Touch for $99, the Kindle Touch with 3G for $149, and a Kindle without touch capabilities for $79.

Amazon Kindle Fire

Update: The live blogs confirmed that the Amazon Kindle Fire will have a dual core processor and a 7-inch IPS (in plane switching) touch display. Based on the description of the demonstrations, it also features a gesture-based navigation scheme, similar to the BlackBerry PlayBook and Nokia N9.

Amazon’s Jeff Bezos also made a big deal of the browser technology they’re shipping with the device: Amazon Silk.

Calling it “Dynamic Split Browsing,” Bezos is quoted as saying that the browser is smart enough to offload things to Amazon’s EC2 (elastic compute cloud) – everything can be done either locally or remotely.

Some of its features include: compressing images, processing JavaScript, and caching typical next pages based on usage patterns.

The Amazon Kindle Fire is set to ship mid-November 2011, but it is unclear whether we will be able to get our hands on the devices locally.