The new 7-inch Fire, which ships Sept. 14, is now also joined by a new line of tablets, referred to as "Kindle Fire HD." There are two tablets with the "HD" label, 7- and 8.9-inch versions, which boast many new features, such as cameras, that the basic 7-inch Fire lacks.
The updated 7-inch Fire has improved specs over the original: Amazon says it gets double the battery life, has a 1.2GHz processor that's 40% faster and double the RAM (1GB instead of 512MB).
The original Kindle Fire was released last fall and quickly became the best-selling Android tablet ever. Although some reviews criticized its buggy software, users flocked to the tablet because of its rock-bottom price among tablets ($199) and easy access to Amazon's content services, such as Instant Video. The Kindle Fire was clearly an influence in the creation of Google's Nexus 7 tablet, which is similar in size and price.
Correction: This post originally incorrectly stated the amount of storage in the $159 Kindle Fire. The correct amount is 8GB, not 16GB.