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A Kindle Fire Review For Those Who Plan To Void the Warranty

Posted by timothy on from the for-those-about-to-root dept.

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.

10 of 103 comments (clear)

  1. WTF: Why not compare the nook Tablet? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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!

    1. Re:WTF: Why not compare the nook Tablet? by thegarbz · · Score: 5, Informative

      Particularly since the nook is by far the most hack friendly device mass produced in years!

      The Nook what? The Nook Color was. But the Tablet? Maybe you should actually go out and have a look at how hacker friendly the Nook Tablet really is. A quick search on the XDA Developers forum seem to think that the tablet is efuse locked and works with signed bootloaders only. That's about as hack friendly as Motorola's worst phone.

      The Kindle on the other hand has nothing more than a token lock to prevent rooting and existing utilities actually simply worked without modification. No sight of signed bootloaders either. So if I had to bet a body part on which one will get Cyanogenmod 9 first, the smart money is on the Kindle Fire.

  2. Kindle Fire is one device I see no reason to root. by Kenja · · Score: 5, Informative

    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?"
  3. Nice, but... by certain+death · · Score: 5, Funny

    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
  4. Re:Kindle Fire is one device I see no reason to ro by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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
  5. Re:It's kinda scary by nadaou · · Score: 5, Interesting

    > 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.
  6. Is it still 1993? by Hognoxious · · Score: 5, Funny

    <table width="1025" height="338" border="0">

    Yeah, that works fine on my netbook. Fuckbrains!

    --
    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  7. Re:Kindle Fire is one device I see no reason to ro by para_droid · · Score: 5, Informative

    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

  8. Nook Color? Why? by Hallow · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  9. Re:Nook Color by nullchar · · Score: 5, Informative

    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