Anyone with the now old version of the Kindle Fire (sounds unbelievable, huh?) knows that the one deterrent of the otherwise amazing tablet is its inability to take and adequately store photos. Personally, while I’m completely content with my Fire, it’s the one thing that made me think twice about perhaps upgrading. While its newer brethren, the Kindle Fire HD, boasts a front-facing HD camera for taking photos and using video chat service Skype (News - Alert), its predecessor remained just a tad less evolved – until now.
This morning, Amazon sent out a mass e-mail to its loyal Kindle users to proclaim that, alas, they can now enjoy photos on their Kindle Fire using the Cloud Drive Photos app. The app, in said e-mail, allows you to “store your photos online and have them at your fingertips on your Fire.”
Amazon’s initial venture into the world of color touchscreen tablets was met with overwhelming popularity, becoming the preferred tablet for many, despite heavy hitters such as Nook Color and Apple’s (News - Alert) infamous iPad. The original Kindle Fire accumulated so much consumer enthusiasm that only one year after the original was being touted as a perfect 2011 holiday gift, the Kindle Fire HD was already being advertised as an even better one for this past Christmas 2012.
In the e-mail, Amazon explained that what plays a large role in product advancement is its customers, saying, “Getting Cloud Drive photos on the original Fire has been one of our customers’ top requests and the new app, which uses Cloud Drive to make sure your photos are securely stored and available anywhere, brings the photo-viewing experience of the latest-generation Kindle Fire to your original Fire or your Android (News - Alert) phone.”
On the official site, the app is touted as “online storage that fits your life,” where you’ll “never worry about losing a precious memory or not having access to your important files on the go.”
Reportedly, Amazon Cloud Drive will make storing users’ photos, videos and other various documents and digital files in the cloud both quick and easy. Even better, users can kick this off with a whopping 5 GB of free storage, or enough to store up to 2,000 photos.
The company also makes an effort to thoroughly point out that users’ files will be securely stored – something that is certainly top of mind concerning the cloud. The site says, “Protecting your files in the cloud is as simple as dragging files to the Cloud Drive icon using the Cloud Drive Desktop App.” For users who are on-the-go who need a file stored in the cloud drive, they can easily do so via any Web browser. Even more, users can install Cloud Drive Photos for Android to upload photos from their phone or tablet in case their phone is ever stolen, lost or damaged.
If there was anything more Amazon could do to make us love the Kindle Fire, this is definitely it.