Bluetooth? No
HDMI? No
Camera? No
Microphone? No
micro/SD slot? No
GPS? No
3G? No
Android Market? No (only Amazon Market)To each his own, but I bought the new Kindle for this reason. I own a Kindle Keyboard, but it was just too much -- I just wanted a barebones reader. Even the touch, IMO, is overkill -- who really needs to "touch" what is supposed to be a book? So I picked up the $79 Kindle and was very happy. It's really thin, great aesthetics, and has all the barebone features I need to do one job really well.
if amazon is successfully managing expectations for this product, it has plenty of features. if the fanboys get out of control and oversell it, then it is sorely lacking.
A Kindle Fire, by contrast, puts media front and center right away, and will surely make the store as easily accessible as it is on the e-ink Kindles. It's a Kindle, so right off the bat, you can read books. You get a free trial of Prime, so right off the bat, you can watch video.
Presumably they will make it easy to understand the process for getting your music into the Amazon cloud (or copied on to the device), and I'm sure it won't be too hard to go get hooked up with a copy of Angry Birds, or whatever other games and starter apps they're pushing. And as long as Amazon has a credit card on file for you (pretty likely if you're buying an Amazon tablet), purchasing whatever it is you want will be ridiculously simple, just like on the Kindle.
It should be a fairly batteries-included experience for the vast majority of users right out of the box.
That said, $200 is getting dangerously near the comfort zone for a device purely bought with the intention of using it around the house (where WiFi negates the need for large onboard storage).
Not to say that the Fire is a guaranteed hit, but I think that as a consumption device aimed at consumers it needs very little of those features.
Nilay Patal had a great quote about the Fire v iPad. He said the Fire actually competes with the iPad not because it does more, but because it does less.
Its not a feature war :) I couldn't give a flip about everything you just mentioned. Here's the real test:
Great product: yes
That is all that matters.
HDMI? -- Don't need it, why would I hook my tablet to my TV?
Camera? -- Don't need it, I have a camera and a cell phone.
Microphone? -- Why would I need a microphone on a tablet?
micro/SD slot? -- Don't need it, my content is stored on Amazon's servers. It has enough physical space for content when I'm on the go.
GPS? -- Don't need it, I'm not using this for maps on the go. That's what my cell phone is for.
3G? -- One valid point.
Android Market? -- The most valid point, but not a deal-breaker.
Lists like these are almost always ignorant of typical use cases. That's partly why Apple does so well -- they engineer for the typical use, even if it excludes power users.