The big news yesterday was clearly Amazon’s Kindle Fire. The news that flamed up briefly at the same time? Kobo’s also got a 7-inch tablet running Android. For a tablet called the Vox, they seem reluctant to talk about it, however.
Amazon’s got to have known that calling its tablet the Fire was an invitation for terrible puns, especially when competitors arrived to heat up the market. You may have noticed that I have an awful weakness for puns. Time to warm up the pun-o-meter to 11, then…
So, the Kobo Vox showed up briefly on a Canadian retail site before its flame was snuffed out, presumably because it’s not meant to be public yet. An alert MobileRead forum user grabbed specifications and pics of the hot little number before it was pulled, so now we’ve got some of the sizzling details.
Price was listed as $249 Canadian — to enlighten you, that’s about $245 in Australian dollars. That probably seemed red hot before the Fire was announced at $US199 yesterday. Now it seems likely that if Kobo does launch at that price, it’ll get terribly burnt. The Vox is WiFi capable (but not 3G), has 8GB of storage and a 1024 x 600 7-inch display, running Android. Whether Kobo will put a torch under its developers to reskin and rework the Vox’s Android implementation isn’t known. Release date for those in the frozen north was stated to be October 17th, but there’s no word on any kind of other release date; I’ll keep an eye out for any smoke signals.
OK, I’ll stop now with the awful fire puns. I feel totally burned out, and there’s always the risk somebody will draw a firearm on me. [Mobileread via Lilliputing]