A teardown of Amazon's new Kindle Fire showed that the online retailer went with the 1GHz Texas Instruments OMAP 4430 processor for its entry into the media tablet market.

iFixit took apart the device, undertaking in the process the publication's first in-house chip unmasking. The Kindle Fire proved to be relatively easy to tear down and earned a score of 8 out of 10 for repairability. By comparison, Apple's iPad 2 received a 4 out of 10 during its teardown.

In addition to the TI OMAP 4430 chip, the teardown of the Fire found 8GB of Samsung Flash memory, 512MB of Hynix RAM and several other Texas Instruments chips on-board the Fire.

Earlier reports had suggested that Amazon would go with the same chip as Research in Motion's PlayBook tablet in order to keep costs down and move the project along. The PlayBook does, in fact, also use the TI OMAP 4430 chip.

The teardown also noted that the tablet's only button is a power button, a fact that has drawn some criticism from reviewers. Reviews for the device have been generally positive, with most noting that the Fire is a good deal but no "iPad killer."

 

According to the report, the capacity of the 3.7 volt battery stands at 16.28 Watt-hours, significantly less than the iPad 2's 25 Watt-hours. iFixit also pointed out that charging the Fire over a computer USB port will take longer than the advertised four-hour charge time for when the device is plugged into an outlet.

A recent survey of more than 2,000 developers found growing interest in the Kindle Fire, with 49 percent of those surveyed indicating they were "very interested" in developing for the device. Meanwhile, Apple maintained a dominant share with 88 percent of respondents interested in developing for the iPad.

 

As for consumers, 26 percent of Kindle Fire buyers say they delayed or put on hold an iPad purchase, according to a survey by ChangeWave and RBC Capital Markets.

Amazon revealed last month that it is building millions more Kindle Fires than originally planned. One recent report claimed the company is looking to build 5 million units by the end of the year.

But, Apple has said it is not worried about the Fire affecting iPad sales. Company executives recently indicated that they believe Amazon's tablet will further fragment the market because it is a fork off Android. Apple reportedly believes the more fragmentation the better, as it will drive customers toward its stable iPad platform.

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According to a report from IDC, Apple shipped more smartphones than any other manufacturer in Q2, stealing bragging rights from a struggling Nokia. With 20.3 million units shipped, Apple managed to nab a 19.1 percent market share, representing year-over-year growth of 141.7 percent. Samsung and Nokia followed behind, with RIM and HTC bringing up the rear.

It’s worth noting that HTC posted record numbers this quarter with 166 percent YOY growth to claim an 11.7 percent market share, up from 8.9 percent last quarter. The HTC Sensation and Evo 3D had quite a bit to do with that, along with HTC’s increasing prominence in China. Even though the company ranks fifth, it still seemed to eat a large portion of RIM and Nokia’s share. But HTC wasn’t alone in that — Samsung took a big bite, too.

In fact, Samsung’s had an amazing year, seeing year-over-year growth of 380.6 percent. Much of that success can be attributed to the Samsung Galaxy S II, which sold 3 million units in its first 55 days on the market. If they can maintain anything like that growth for a little longer, they’ll leapfrog Apple with ease.

Now for the bad news. RIM shipped a little over one million more smartphones this quarter than it did in the same quarter of 2010 — which would be a respectable bump if the smartphone market itself hadn’t seen far greater growth, hitting 106.5 million shipments overall this quarter. So while RIM did ship more handsets, they actually lost a ton of market share.

Now for the really bad news. Nokia, as expected, performed worse this quarter compared to last year both in units sold and market share. After a 30 percent drop in units shipped, Nokia now controls just 15.7 percent of the market. Obviously, the transition from MeeGo to Windows Phone 7 has quite a bit to do with this. While MeeGo dies, customers are opting for brand new phones rather than waiting for a Windows-powered Nokia handset. What’s worse, the wait isn’t ending anytime soon, as the U.S. isn’t anywhere on Nokia’s list of countries to get the first Windows-powered handset.

Apple and Android eating Nokia and RIM’s lunch isn’t exactly breaking news, but seeing the actual numbers is always interesting. According to comScore’s latest numbers, Android has taken a 40 percent market share as of June. It just so happens that the manufacturers seeing the greatest growth — HTC and Samsung — also happen to predominantly run Android. It only follows that if Android can continue to grow at the rate it is, Samsung and HTC will follow suit.

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Like many of you, I am visiting family this holiday season and nowhere does gadget snobbery become more apparent than during gatherings with loved ones. Aside from the ubiquitous “Whose phone is faster?” question, which in my case led to an email race at Christmas dinner, there is endless potential for the marginally tech savvy to show off during the holidays.

But all the superiority gleaned from being able to load non-iTunes purchases into your mom’s iPod is tossed out the window when faced with a relative’s overly complex coffee machine, an arbitrarily complicated alarm clock and two separate indecipherable TV remotes for one TV.

In my first encounter with my family’s new Cuisinart Coffee Maker CHW-12 Cup Programmable with Hot Water System, I ended up confused by the superfluous “Hot Water System” and poured the water intended for coffee in there instead of the coffee maker, costing myself an extra 20 minutes trying to figure out how to extract coffee from the infernal thing. I almost went to Starbucks.

Many people received iPads and iPhones this Christmas, and because of Apple’s legendary intuitive and straightforward design, could pull them right out of the box and commence using. Not the case with a battery powered pepper grinder one of my relatives received at our gift exchange. It took three people to put together and when we did get it to work, we hilariously realized that it had a flashlight at the bottom, for no reason. Novel? yes. Productive? No.

In my own home, I use a De’Longhi Magnifica espresso machine, which is the closest thing to what would happen if Apple made a coffee machine. With literally a push of a button, it grinds coffee beans, brews them and even cleans itself afterwards.

I am not alone in the quest for simpler appliance design, Coding Horror’s Jeff Atwood is similarly befuddled by the controls interface of a microwave:

“I was struck, the other day, by how much I had to think when attempting to heat up my sandwich in the microwave. There are so many controls: a clock, a set of food-specific buttons, defrost and timer controls, and of course a full numeric keypad. Quick! What do you press?”

The saddest thing is that appliances used to be simpler. Old style microwaves used to have one knob, that only represented time. Now we’ve got a controls for various foods and buttons for “More,”"Less,”"Dinner Plate,”"Defrost,” the cryptic “Auto-Defrost” and so on when all we end up doing is putting our Hot Pockets in there and trial and erroring our way to the perfect cooking time. “Hmm, this looks like it is about done.”

Dieter Ram’s appliance designs for Braun, which inspired the design team at Apple, hearken to a pre-digital touchpad era when design aspired to help us understand products or at least be unobtrusive. I guess I have the seventies to thank for the fact that I’ve got a radio alarm clock next to me right now that I have never used because I seriously can’t figure out how to the set the controls to get it to wake me up. I use my iPhone.

Notice how the title of this post isn’t “All Appliances Should Be Made By Apple” or even “All Computers Should Be Made By Apple” (or the byline would be something along the lines of “MG Siegler”). There are moments in life where you need a PC, but there aren’t many where you need your coffee maker to also warm water for tea, your pepper holder to double as a flashlight, or one remote to turn on your TV and another to change the channel.