Face off: Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9 vs. Amazon Kindle Fire

The challenge

Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9 is an ideal tablet PC. Situating in between a 10.1-inch Galaxy Tab 10.1 and 7-inch Galaxy Tab 7.0 Pro, Galaxy Tab 8.9 is a typical tablet in size and weight. It is not too small like Galaxy Tab 7.0 Pro and not too big like Galaxy Tab 10.1. At the same time, the tablet has all key features a tablet should have. It runs on Google Android 3.1 Honeycomb and is a perfect product for eReading, film watching and others. Here we compare Galaxy Tab 8.9 with Kindle Fire, an upcoming 7-inch tablet from Amazon, the leading online vendor. Kindle Fire is actually a tablet version of the company’s famous Kindle eReader series. Amazon presents it as a great device for eReading on a color and multimedia platform. Get through the comparison below to see which of Kindle Fire or Galaxy Tab 8.9 best suits for you.

Face off

Comparison Attributes

Operating System

Both Galaxy Tab 8.9 and Kindle Fire are Android tablets. The first one has Android 3.1 Honeycomb, the special version of the software for tablets. Meanwhile, Kindle Fire is to play on Android 2.3 Gingerbread.

Winner: Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9.

Display

Kindle Fire has a 7-inch LCD multitouch display with a resolution of 1024 x 600 pixels. Amazon has shown off the 7-inch factor of Fire even before the device’s official release. Galaxy Tab 8.9, as it speaks itself, sports an 8.9-inch TFT display that has a resolution of 800 x 1280 pixels.

Winner: Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9. It has a moderate display.

Processor

Galaxy Tab 8.9 is powered by a dual core 1GHz ARM Cortex-A9 processor with Tegra 2 T20 chipset and ULP GeForce GPU. Kindle Fire, at the same time, mounts a dual core TI OMAP4 processor.

Winner: Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9.

Size

Kindle Fire is small in size with the dimensions of 90 x 120 x 11.4 mm and weight of 413 grams. Meanwhile, Galaxy Tab 8.9 is a bit bulkier with the dimensions of 230.9 x 157.8 x 8.6 mm and weight of 453 grams.

Winner: Amazon Kindle Fire

Memory

Galaxy Tab 8.9 comes in three memory options; 16GB, 32GB and 64GB and with 1GB of RAM. Amazon has manufactured Kindle Fire with 8GB built-in memory and 512MB of RAM. On the device, you have cloud storage option thanks to Amazon Cloud Drive.

Winner: Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9.

Content Formats Supported

Galaxy Tab 8.9 is a complete multimedia tablet. It supports all types of multimedia contents including texts, images, audio and video. So is Kindle Fire; but it is a multimedia version of an eReader. Hence, Fire supports all text files including doc, PDF and many others. The device also supports image, audio and video formats.

Winner: Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9

USB Port

Galaxy Tab 8.9 mounts a USB 2.0 port. Kindle Fire also has a USB 2.0 port.

Winner: No winner. Both tablets have USB 2.0 ports.

Connectivity

Besides a USB 2.0 port, Kindle Fire features Wi-Fi 802.11 b, g, n and a microUSB port. On other hand, Galaxy Tab 8.9 is rich with plenty of connectivity options. The list goes on GPRS, EDGE, Wi-Fi (802.11 a/b/g/n), Bluetooth v3.0 with A2DP and a USB v2.0 port.

Winner: Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9.

Camera

You have 3.15-megapixel camera with 2048 x 1536 pixels on Galaxy Tab 8.9. The camera is equipped with autofocus and LED flash. The device also has a 2-megapixel front camera for video chatting. But Kindle Fire is unfortunately with no cameras.

Winner: Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9.

Price

Samsung sells Galaxy Tab 8.9 for $470. Kindle Fire has grabbed media attention for its affordable price of $199.

Winner: Amazon Kindle Fire

The verdict:

The small tablet frenzy is going up. After the influx of many large tablets, it is now the time of small tablets. Amazon Kindle Fire and Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9 are two leading small tablets we have. Both devices are Android-based and they are mainly for eReading, movie watching and web surfing. Though Galaxy Tab 8.9 is outshining Kindle Fire in tech specs and features, pricing gives score for Kindle Fire, which is known for its $199 price tag.