Amazon

Amazon announced the 7-inch and 8.9-inch Kindle Fire HD tablets along with the Kindle Paperwhite eReader on Thursday. Pre-orders are currently being accepted for all three devices. The 8.9-inch Kindle Fire measures 8.8mm thick and weighs in at 20 ounces. It is available in a 16GB Wi-Fi version for $299 or 4G LTE (32GB) version for $499. The 7-inch tablet is $199 for 16GB.

The 8.9 tablet sports a 1920 x 1200 HD display with 254 ppi, and the 7-inch features a 1280 x 800 display. Both tablets feature Dolby audio, a powerful OMAP4 4470 processor, dual antenna for faster Wi-Fi connections, 11 hours of battery life, and a front-facing HD camera with custom Skype application for video calling from anywhere in the world.

The popular music streaming service Spotify is now available for the Amazon Kindle Fire. Spotify gives Kindle owners access to millions of songs, and the ability to share music with friends. Premium members have access to Spotify's entire music library and can listen to music offline.

New users can take a 48 hour free trial of the premium service by logging in with their Facebook account from their mobile device. Users who do not choose to spend the $9.99 on a subscription will only have access to Spotify's radio-like feature.

Amazon Wireless is once again offering some great deals on several decent smartphones. The newly released 4G LTE LG Lucid has joined the Motorola DROID 3, HTC Droid Incredible 2 and other great Android handsets on Amazon's penny smartphone roster.

The LG Lucid 4G features a 1.2 GHz dual-core processor, 1 GB of RAM and Android 2.3. The Motorola DROID 3 ships with a 4-inch qHD display, 1GHz dual-core TI OMAP processor and 8MP rear-facing camera. The HTC Droid Incredible 2 is the follow-up to the popular HTC Droid Incredible. It features a 4-inch LCD display, 1GHz processor and 8MP rear camera.

Various Kindle Fire accessories and games have been discounted for Amazon's New Year, New You sale. All EA games are only $.99 for a limited time. This includes Madden NFL 12 and Dead Space. Popular Kindle books like The Hunger Games ($4.69) have also been discounted. The New Year's sale ends on January 21, 2011. Check below for a complete list of $0.99 EA Games:

The customer reviews for the Amazon Kindle Fire have been a mixed bag so far. Some claim to love it, and others have an issue with its small screen, slow connectivity and the lack of the ability to hide porn from their wives. Usability expert Jakob Nielsen recently slammed the device's "fat-finger" problems and slow screen updates.

"7-inch tablets have either a glorious future or will fail miserably. I doubt there's a middle path in their future," Nielsen wrote in his report.

While some of Nielsen's criticisms mirror some customer complaints, his concerns over programmers not designing content for 7-inch tablets doesn't really add up for the Kindle Fire. Unlike other failed tablets with barren app stores, the Kindle Fire already offers thousands of apps, movies, games, music and books through Amazon.com.

The Kindle Fire is so important to Amazon's future that the company is losing money on each device. Like video game consoles, Amazon hopes to make its money back on content like renting movies and selling virtual books. The customer complaints have not fallen of deaf ears, and Amazon has promised its first OTA update to address the issues in a few weeks.