Amazon uses its Kindle Fire tablets to deliver a wide range of services — from e-books to movies to videogames to music. The newest versions of the tablets, which the company showed for the first time today, add a new offering: live customer support over video chat.
The redesigned Kindle Fire HDX — the new name hints at the updated displays — comes in the same 7-inch and 8.9-inch configurations as the previous Kindle Fire tablets. The new Kindle tablets also include the expected processor and RAM bump. Both models are available for pre-order now, with the 7-inch starting at $230 and shipping November 14, and the 8.9-inch starting at $380 and shipping December 10.
But more important than these iterative hardware enhancements is Amazon’s Mayday live tech support feature, which uses live Amazon employees to help new tablet owners navigate and troubleshoot their Fire devices.
At a time when most tablet manufacturers are competing solely on hardware features — seeing who can pack the most pixels into their displays or build around the fastest processors — Amazon is choosing to diferentiate itself by further humanizing the user experience. And that’s not to say that the new Kindle Fire HDX is a slouch hardware-wise. The upgrades to the internals make it a thoroughly modern tablet that can compete with the iPad and Android-based devices. But rather than add some gimmicky software tricks to wow the curious, Amazon is building in a feature that makes the tablet friendlier, less intimidating. And its accomplishing it by doing what Amazon does best: by leveraging the power of its massive infrastructre.
If you’re suffering from technical woes, the new Mayday feature contacts an Amazon tech-support employee directly on the tablet. You see the support person on your screen in a tiny video box while they help you. The video window can be moved by the user or Amazon employee to make sure both parties can see the area of the screen they need to interact with. Amazon’s personnel can also draw directly on your screen to help you find and complete tasks. If you’d rather let Amazon do all the work, control of your tablet can be handed over entirely to your new tiny video friend. Just ask them to complete a task and they’ll take care of it while you watch.
Source : Wired
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