Amazon brings Alexa voice assistant to its tablets with upgraded Fire HD 8

Amazon announced on Thursday an upgraded Fire HD 8 tablet with improved specifications and the arrival of its Alexa voice assistant to the mobile platform for the first time. Amazon's Echo Dot, Tap, Alexa equate to Amazon Everywhere strategy The company's Alexa platform--along with integration with third parties and replenishment systems like Dash--highlight an ambitious smart home and Internet of things effort. Now available to purchase on Amazon, the Fire HD 8's price has been dropped to 90 from 150 with the same 8-inch display and 1,280x800-pixel resolution, along with the addition of a larger 4,750mAh battery with a claimed 12 hours of charge, 1.5GB of RAM, 16GB or 32GB of storage, and a microSD slot for upgraded storage. If you're expecting a beast of tablet to take on the iPad or Galaxy Tab -- think again. However, the addition of the Alexa voice assistant is a promising feature, as we've seen with the hot sales and positive reviews of Amazon's Alexa-powered Echo speakers. Alexa, working similar to Google Now and Siri, can serve users with voice-prompted information like weather, news, and interestingly enough, an Uber.