Had to look up the specs on wikipedia
dual-core 1 GHz ARM Cortex-A9 “Apple A5”
512 mb DDR2 (1066 MHz RAM)
Flash 16 gb, 32 gb and 64 gb versions
9.7”, 4:3, 1024×768 132 ppi
Camera Front: VGA 0.3mp, Back: 0.7mp video 1280x720, pictures 960×720
a/b/g/n wifi, bluetooth 2.1 + EDR
Sensors: 3axis gyro, accelerometer, magnetometer, proximity, ambient light
Specs do look better. Amazing how prices come down.
Fire only has 8 gb flash though. Could get a bit cramped. If you install large apps like large games, you could run out of room and need to uninstall old apps to fit new stuff. The fire does have a microSD but apps use the flash. At least with the stock fire OS, if you root it or use a custom rom you can move some apps to SD.
I think the fire certainly will have limitations, it has to at $50/$35 but it is from a major brand, amazon, it should be half way decent at least. Worth a shot imho. And I believe they may be selling it at a bit of a loss, expecting most people to buy books, apps, videos on the tablet. Also it shows ads on the lockscreen.
Tech prices are always fun to watch. I remember not that long ago I said to a friend “wow flash drives are $1 a GB!” Now like a year or two later they’re down to about .20 cents a GB.
I won’t be using the tablet to game, but watch YouTube mostly, a bit of internet browsing and some Hulu. It seems appealing at $35 for that… I’ve got till the 29th to decide at least.
I bought an astro tab brand for 39.90 a few days ago with better specs than the low end Fire, none of Amazon’s ads or bloatware, and I can just install the Kindle app from the Google Play store. It even has Lolipop 5.1. It’s a better Kindle than the Kindle.
I’m a huge fan of Amazon and buy most of the stuff I own from there, but not tablets.
Well I ordered one via Amazon UK for £35.00 a bargain but nothing like the bargain they are having in the States. Mind you I don’t have any sales taxes or charges to add on to that price. I shall be running it stock as I have an Amazon Prime account. I will also invest in a 32gb micro sd card and fill it with a few box sets of tv shows and just use the device as a rough and ready media device that can be dropped in my work bag or whatever and not worried about.
Another question is, how do we know which flash cards are compatible with what devices, in other words, which are interchangeable, for instance SDXC UHS-1, or SDHC for example?
The Fire tablet (stock amazon OS) is compatible with microSD cards up to 128gb. As long as it’s not over 128gb it should work.
Though I would recommend sandisk microSD cards. They are the leader in SD. Any brand microSD should work fine, in any device, as long as the device supports the card’s capacity size. But once in awhile some brands other than sandisk can have compatibility problems. Not suppose to happen but it can happen.
For those planing to use a custom rom you might need to reformat larger SD cards to something other than exfat. See the xda CM12.1 thread.
Rom refers to the OS (operating system) in android devices. “Custom rom” means changing the OS on an android device. CM (CyanogenMod) 12.1 is one popular custom rom. Xda is a forum, by far the biggest forum for custom roms and major tweaking of android devices.
The OS is the entire environment that you see on screen, controls everything, Mac, windows, linux are OSs for computers.
Ok!
So… I got a Fire in my hands. Now be aware I did not spend a lot of time using the Fire in it’s stock form (with the stock amazon OS / environment). I saw lots of amazon apps that point you toward purchasing stuff from amazon. E-books, music, movies / tv shows, etc. And I don’t believe you can delete or hide these amazon apps from within the Fire (you can hide them if you are computer inclined). Personally I don’t buy e-books, music, videos or any media from amazon, so seeing all these things suggesting buying stuff is annoying to me. The tablet felt limited by amazon’s OS. But, I think I am biased, first thing I do with my devices is root, change the OS and start tweaking to my liking. “Is that an ad?! Where is my adblocker?” I’m afraid I can’t really say how tablet will be for those who don’t have “amazon prime” or don’t want to buy into amazon’s ecosystem. As I said I didn’t spend much time trying it in it’s stock form. I wanted to see what the Fire could really do so I loaded a custom rom (aka removed the entire amazon OS / environment). If there is interest I might try to find the time to go back to stock form and provide a better impression of how it is stock.
With a custom rom (I’m currently trying out CM 12.1 CyanogenMod), the Fire is quite nice. And for $35… I’m tempted to call it great! All previous limitations due to the amazon OS are gone, of course. Only been using for a day but so far no problems.
I almost got one. I returned the cheap tablet I got because it had a bad display, and almost pulled the trigger on one of those Fires with the intention of rooting it. The HD one is only $69.
All I want a 7 inch tablet for is reading books, but I decided that the higher resolution was better for text (the fonts look smoother) and ended up getting an octa core 1280x800 tablet for $99. Better reviews than the big name brands. Deerbrook brand I think (?)
Either way I settled on buying a tablet from Amazon because the return process is so painless, and it’s already paying dividends with a return on the first tablet I bought. I put it on the porch. UPS comes the next business day—painless.
Last year I bought the $600+ Fire HDX for the wife and mother in law. The wife had to return hers once, and the mother in law had 3 returns I think before she got one that worked right. So keep in mind that an Amazon tablet is just a Chinese tablet that they stand behind.
I think the tally was 2 that wouldn’t charge to 100% and 1 bad one out of the box. Amazon was great about it, though. They cross shipped the new ones and took care of everything, no questions asked.
And that to me is the only reason to buy Amazon’s generic branded Chinese tablet over the other cheap Chinese tablets, which give you better bang per buck IMHO.
