The endlessly curious, deconstructive folks at iFixit have had a look inside Amazon’s just-released Kindle Fire and returned to tell the tale: It has the heart of a Playbook.
If you’re just joining us, the Kindle Fire employs a 7-inch multitouch display, a dual-core processor, 512MB of memory, 8GB of internal flash storage, 802.11n wireless and runs a custom version of Google’s Android 2.3 “Gingerbread” operating system. That’s the consumer spec rundown, anyway.
(MORE: Amazon Releases New Kindles Early)
Pull the rubberized back-case away, however, and you’ll find all sorts of interesting things. Like: It uses parts from Samsung, Hynix, Jorjin and Texas Instruments, its 4400 mAh capacity battery isn’t quite up to iPad 2 spec and it uses a 1GHz Texas Instruments OMAP 4430 processor—the same processor found inside Research in Motion’s Blackberry PlayBook.
The Fire physically resembles the PlayBook, too, which prompted some to draw comparisons prior to the Fire’s release. It turns out the speculation was well-grounded.
“It’s similar to the PlayBook in the sense that it has the same basic components — motherboard, battery, display,” said Miroslav Djuric, iFixit’s director of technical communications.
Among other things, iFixit found the device’s 8GB of flash storage is manufactured by Samsung, its 512MB of memory comes from Hynix, the touchscreen controller’s by ILITEK and Texas Instruments parts account for various power and audio-related components, though iFixit says the Texas Instruments Wi-Fi part is an older-than-expected model. The dissembler also notes that the Fire’s 5V, 1.8 amp power connector means it’ll take a long—or as iFixit puts it, “looong”—time to charge off a USB port (a USB 3.0 port only generates up to 0.9 amps).
iFixit rates the Fire toward the high end of its “repairability” scale, noting the ease with which it opens, that all the screws are uniform and Philips-based, that the LCD’s easy to remove and the device uses relatively few components thanks to its “simplistic design and limited functionality.”
Want to watch the blow-by-blow for yourself? Here you go.
[via IBT]
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Matt Peckham is a reporter at TIME. Find him on Twitter at @mattpeckham or on Facebook. You can also continue the discussion on TIME’s Facebook page and on Twitter at @TIME.