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"  Amazon&amp;#039;s Kindle Fire tablets have always served as gateway to the company&amp;#039;s vast ecosystem of content, including e-books, games, music, video, and more. Today, Amazon unveiled the latest iteration of these slates: the redesigned Kindle Fire HDX. The update, which brings the expected refreshed specs to the tablets, also adds a surprising new feature to the mix: human customer support over a live video chat. The Kindle Fire HDX comes in the same two sizes as previous Kindle Fire tablets, 7 and 8.9 inches. Amazon also has gussied up the hardware, including screen, RAM, processor, and casing. For software, Amazon&amp;#039;s got a new version of its tweaked Android operating system, Fire OS. Completely rewritten, the software tries to play catch-up with iOS and Android for enabling user productivity and not just media consumption. Amazon managed to make this year&amp;#039;s devices much lighter\u2014up to 34 percent lighter than the previous generation large-screen Fire HD tablet, the company claims. It accomplished that by using a single piece of machined magnesium as the frame and integrating the capacitive touch layer into the Fire HDX&amp;#039;s glass display. For computing muscle, the tablets wield the much faster 2.2GHz quad-core Snapdragon 800, upgraded from the TI OMAP processors in older models. RAM got a boost as well, to 2 GB from 1. These bolstered guts make more graphics-intensive tasks possible, which should display nicely on the tablets&amp;#039; improved screens. The 7-inch model now boasts a 1920 x 1200 resolution at 323 ppi, while the 8.9-inch model got a resolution hike to 2560 x 1600 at 339 ppi. That&amp;#039;s a marginal difference in picture density over the iPad (264 ppi) and the Samsung Nexus 10 (300 ppi), but an improvement nonetheless. Amazon claims a battery life of 11 hours, one hour more than last year&amp;#039;s models. Given the brighter and denser screen resolutions of both new models, that&amp;#039;s an impressive efficiency gain, mostly thanks to processor and memory optimizations in the gadget. But the most intriguing feature in the Fire HDX lies beyond these hardware specs. Users can now access a slide-down settings panel at the top of the Fire HDX&amp;#039;s screen and hit a button that connects them to &amp;quot;Mayday.&amp;quot; That&amp;#039;s Amazon&amp;#039;s new video support chat, where users face a real human technician to help them troubleshoot their problems live. When you connect, the technician can talk to you and see everything that&amp;#039;s on your screen, draw arrows and circles for you to see, or gain control of the UI if you give them permission. The Fire HDX&amp;#039;s microphone is activated but the camera isn&amp;#039;t, so you can see Amazon&amp;#039;s representative but they can&amp;#039;t see you. The experience is almost like going on a trip to the Genius Bar, except you don&amp;#039;t have to make an appointment and show up at an Apple Store. Amazon says it wants each customer to have a wait time of no longer than 15 seconds, and the service is free for anyone who owns a Kindle Fire HDX. Both the 7-inch and 8.9-inch Kindle Fire HDX tablets are available for pre-order today. The 7-inch version starts at $230, while the 8.9-inch version starts at $380. Adding in 4G LTE, these jump to $380 and $480 respectively. While you can commit to the purchase today, the 7-inch version will ship on November 14 and the 8.9-inch version a bit later, on December 10. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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