Slashdot Mirror
A Kindle Fire Review For Those Who Plan To Void the Warranty
The mixed reviews so far available for the new Amazon Fire tablet mostly address the Fire in its intended role as a locked-down portal through which to buy and consume ready-made content from Amazon. New submitter terracode writes with a different kind of review, which "goes into depth on the Kindle Fire's hardware, and provides details on how to root and tweak the tablet." The article also provides a friendly chart comparing the hardware in the Fire to that of the Nook Color and the iPad 2.
This is fine, but it says that the nook Color is the Kindle Fire's closest competitor. The nook Tablet is now, and it has a helluva lot more horsepower than the Kindle Fire. (And a better looking body...) So it makes me wonder what kind of kool-aid this reviewer is drinking. Particularly since the nook is by far the most hack friendly device mass produced in years!
The whole point of the Fire is to use it as a content consumption device for Amazons services. It frankly, is not a great tablet otherwise as it lacks things such as a flash card slot. So long as I use my Fire to view Amazon content, it works great and the missing hardware isn't noticed. If I where to look for a low cost tablet to root and mess around with the Nook is leaps and bounds better and worth the extra 50$. But I just wanted an eReader and client for Amazons video services. So I went with the Fire and have little issues with it (the carousel is problematic so far as you can not control what gets placed in it).
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
From the analysis of the Nook Tablet thus far, it's actually less capable than the Kindle due to the signed bootloader and checksummed kernel and ramdisk. As a result it's likely that the Kindle will see CM9 and ICS, while the Nook Tablet will be perpetually stuck on Gingerbread.
Unless something changes drastically on the Nook Tablet, B&N have done a complete 180 on the hackability of their Android-based devices this go around. Damn shame, but that's how dickish companies are these days.
Well, the Nook has technical hurdles to overcome. That may just be a matter of waiting till someone cracks it. The Fire is easy to root, but I see no reason to do so. Look at it this way, what do you gain by rooting a Kindle Fire? You can already install third party APKs by checking the option in the system preferences and you can use the Android developer tools to side-load apps if you add the devices ID number to your INI file. Once rooted however you lose access to the Amazon cloud and video streaming services. So overall, it seems like it cripples the device more then it elevates it.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
The security mechanism is the same as the one Motorola has employed on all of their OMAP based devices. At most, kexec may be available to try something, however you're still stuck bending over backwards and twisting yourself to get around an extremely punitive security system that won't hesitate to brick your system.
Of course, I don't look at these devices for how effectively they can try and stick their fingers in my wallet, but how effectively I can make them do what I want them to, which is one reason I ruled out the Kindle Fire as soon as I learned it had no SD card slot.
Yes, but will it run Windows 3.1 or NT 4.0?
"My immediate reaction is "WTF? What kind of moron doesn't make things 64-bit safe to begin with?" Linus
Pardon me if I consider a site selling
Teclast P76Ti 7 Inch Android 2.3 Tablet PC Capacitive TFT Touch Screen Allwinner Many Core A10 1.5GHz 512MB 2160P Decoding MVC-3D Video Playing Flash10.3 Wifi
As not quite being competitive with iPads. Even if it is only $115 dollars. "Allwinner Many Core"? Please.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
You can already install third party APKs by checking the option in the system preferences and you can use the Android developer tools to side-load apps if you add the devices ID number to your INI file.
It's so easy! I'm sure everyone will be doing it!
#DeleteChrome
As long as "many" is greater than "few," but no more than 2, and "few" is equal to 1, then "many core" makes perfect sense: It means exactly 2.
It's just Chinglish.
To translate: "7 inch Android 2.3 tablet with capacitive TFT touch screen, multiple A10 cores (which are fantastic!) at 1.5GHz, 512MB of RAM, and 2160p decoding of 3D video. Also includes Flash 10.3 and Wifi."
Is it really so hard?
I've bought wire from Wonderful Cable before, and motherboards from Diamond Flower Inc, and all were fine products. If someone offered me a chance to get a great deal on widgets from Super Happy Flower Star in Shanghai, I'd give it a look.
I'd also be pleased to buy a tablet from a company offering "Allwinner Many Core" CPUs, if it makes any sense at all and the price were right.
*shrug*
Not everyone, believe it or not, is able to produce useful English marketing text.
Kid-proof tablet..
Will the Nook tablet run the Kindle app?
What if you hack it?
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
> Not everyone, believe it or not, is able to produce useful English marketing text.
yeah, but it makes you question their overall commitment to quality, and the level of frustration you might face if you need to interact with them for support one day.
my old rule of thumb was: buy a no-name product from a known-good-name company, or buy a known-good-name product from a no-name company. No-name product from a no-name company is just asking for trouble, and a Good-name product from a Good-name company is fine if you don't mind paying more than you probably had to.
~.~
I'm a peripheral visionary.
Yeah, that works fine on my netbook. Fuckbrains!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
It's interesting how people so willingly give up their rights based on hearsay. The Magnuson–Moss Warranty Act states that a manufacturer cannot refuse to honor a warranty because a non-OEM part was used or a modification was made, unless they can prove that said part/modification caused the equipment failure in question. If you brick your device by mucking around in /system after rooting it, then you're out of luck. If the battery stops holding a charge, then rooting had nothing to do with it, so it's covered under warranty. Obviously you might not have much luck explaining this legal concept to a support drone, but realistically they won't notice it's rooted in the first place.
That may just be a matter of waiting till someone cracks it.
The Nook Tablet has been rooted: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1354487
I wonder why the comparison was made against the nook color, and not the nook tablet? The tablet is more of a direct competitor. $50 more for the nook tablet gets you the same cpu as the fire, 2x the ram (1GB), 2x the internal storage (16GB), support for up to an additional 32GB via external storage, a less reflective display, and a microphone.
You can even run the amazon app store, kindle app, and amazon instant video player app on the nook tablet. Both the Nook Tablet and the Fire have been rooted, and both have been reported to be able to access the Android Market.
The instructions were brand new and horribly incomplete at the time, but it was fun to hunt down all of the pieces to the puzzle on an environment I was completely unfamilar with. I was mostly interested in learning more about the Android platform, and also to enable Google's Android Marketplace and other Google apps.
I unrooted the Fire (so that Amazon Video on Demand would continue to work), and used the Marketplace to download a better video player app (MX Video Player) and a number of decent games. I didn't go with the Dolphin browser or the GO Launcher for my defaults. (Not that I'm excited about Amazon's launcher.) So basically, I have what acts like a stock Kindle Fire, except I've got Android Marketplace access. I think that combination makes this a winning device. I'll still purchase from Amazon when it makes sense, but I'll go to Google for selection.
The only significant snag I've seen so far is that the pop-up menu bar onto the Kindle Fire slightly confuses apps by a number of pixels about screen size or placement. Some apps will chop off the top of their app's display. Of course, others will use the bottom of the screen for their own menu bar, leaving you with scant pixels (in landscape mode) to hit their buttons. That, and a few apps like the VLC Direct player seems to get me into situations which lock my Kindle from time to time, so I mostly don't use it.
At least when I download Marketplace apps, I can delete applications now and now worry about them haunting my 'cloud applications' screen forever. If I download Angry Birds Free, and then pay for Angry Birds (and remove the free version), do I really need to see two different Angry Birds icons on my device forever, Amazon? Well, I asked, and you apologized that I couldn't delete it. You hinted that you may allow this in the future, and you gave me a $5 credit for my inconvenience. You're not so bad.
Anyhow, rooting and installing the Amazon Marketplace is a little bit of a bumpy road, but it seems to be totally worth it.
Yes, this review should have compared against the Nook Tablet.
Nook Tablet is also an A9 dual core 1GHz, it has twice the ram at 1GB than the Fire and twice the on-board storage at 16GB. They're both the OMAP4430 with the same graphics chip. If you're just looking at hardware, it appears the Nook Tablet wins:
(Same rows as the table in TFA. /. junk char filter wouldn't let me post the row header)
Nook Tablet
TI OMAP4430
ARM Cortex A9 (1 GHz dual core)
POWERVR SGX540 graphics
1 GB Ram
16 GB on-board storage
1024x600 screen res
Source: https://nookdeveloper.barnesandnoble.com/product/nook-tablet-specs.html