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Many Early Adopters of the Amazon Fire Are Unhappy
Hugh Pickens writes "The NY Times reports that the Kindle Fire, Amazon's heavily promoted tablet, is less than a blazing success, with many of its early users packing the device up and firing it back to the retailer. A few of their many complaints: there is no external volume control. The off switch is easy to hit by accident. Web pages take a long time to load. There is no privacy on the device; a spouse or child who picks it up will instantly know everything you have been doing and the touch screen is frequently hesitant and sometimes downright balky. Amazon's response was: 'In less than two weeks, we're rolling out an over-the-air update to Kindle Fire.' The only problem with that is many of the complaints are hardware related and no amount of software can fix one of the early blunders: 'The fire is shipped in a box that advertised on the outside of the box exactly what it is. "Hello, you, thief, please come steal me!"' wrote one would-be customer who, as you might guess, had her Fire stolen and was left with the box. This was supposed to be an iPad killer, with its much lower price point, but Apple is tough to beat because most of its mistakes are software-based."
Another "iPad killer" in the dustbin. You are not going to compete with Apple with some cobbled together piece of junk. The iPad is positioned to be as dominant as the iPod in the mp3 player market.
Might as well buy a Kia and complain that it's not as polished of a driving experience as a BMW.
I picked up my kindle fire about three weeks ago. I will not even try to hide the fact that it has flaws. However, the feature list for the price is exactly what I wanted.
It's no iPad killer, but anyone who thinks they're going to get a 200 dollar product to replace a 500 dollar+ one is delusional.
it has been on every frigin tech news site. Sicker yet of all the frigin people complaining about a $200 dollar device because they think it should be as polished and as feature rich as a $500+ device. The Fire is awesome at what it was designed for, consuming media at a budget. I think it was all the hype about the "iPad killer" and everyone was expecting so much more.
Actually many hardware problems can be fixed with software.
You can not change physical switch position, but with software you can change how long you need to keep switch in specific position until it will do something. So you can fix most of the problems with software when problems are that device is turned off or put on sleep mode by accident touch.
Of course software can not add a external volume buttons, but with software you can bind some existing buttons to work as such (if there is such buttons). Or you can add a easy to access virtual button to offer those functions. It is more a hack but can work for many.
The sensitivity of touch screen can be fixed with software, as software rules again how the input data is being used. Better to have very sensitivite input touch screen and then slow down outpus what with software.
What comes to privacy, well, that can be fixed with software as well, place PIN code or something similar. Add lock to every application and make a easy way to delete history of web browsing or book history etc.
The best selling tablet doesn't have an SD card, so no, that's not one of the problems.
I've been boycotting Amazon ever since they started bullying states into dropping sales taxes.
I think they're just trying to keep from having to report taxes in thousands of local tax districts - many of which span zip codes, making it difficult and expensive to comply. Amazon does support a national proposal to simplify and streamline state sales tax collection.
I bought my girlfriend a Kindle and a couple gift cards, but aside from maybe a few more books for her Kindle, Amazon won't be getting any more of my money.
That's not much of a boycott - by buying a Kindle you've locked her into purchasing further e-books from Amazon (unless she buys all unprotected content that can be viewed on the Kindle). You should have gone for a Nook.
It's not that you cannot prevent people from using the device (lock the device). The problem is that the device is not sharable (in the family). Here is why I returned mine: - No password protection for purchases - anyone can push the "buy" button for digital purchases (books, magazines, music, videos, apps) and it immediate gets purchased without prompting for password. There isn't even an "are you sure?" prompt. Imagine this in the hands of a 6 year-old. - Last browsed pages stay first in the carousel, with page preview - anybody can see, right there on first page, what I browsed last. All this can be fixed with software, and I may buy it again when it gets fixed, but until then iPad rules the home.
When I read consumer reviews, it's always the negative reviews that have the most useful information. And FWIW, 22% dislike rate is pretty damn high. Over one-fifth of the purchasers are unhappy with their purchase? Ouch. That's quite a hit to brand reputation.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
All these negative reviews focus too much on the lack of polish of the UI is compared to the actual usefulness of the device. It's UI lags behind iOS, but it is about the same as a mid range Android device, which are widely successful.
I own the Kindle Fire, and its flaws are really just minor annoyances with device, but the overall experience is good enough. I can surf the Internet, watch videos and play graphic intense games no problem and the small form factor makes it comfortable to hold in one hand. Just because you occasionally have to double tap on a button or experience a 1/2 second lag every once in a while, doesn't mean that the $200 tablet is a failure.
This device was never intended to be an iPad killer. Amazon itself said as much. The linked article makes it sound like it was set to be an iPad killer by "important people," but the link just links back to another pcmag.com article. What a joke.
The fire is not intended, has not been intended to be an iPad killer. It's a cheap tablet device that does what many people need it to do without all the extras that the iPad has that some people will never use. It's one of the primary reasons I returned my iPad and got a Color Nook and rooted it - the Nook did everything I wanted a tablet to do at a fraction of the price. If I were to do the same thing today, I would buy a fire instead of a Nook.
The amount of bitterness emanating from your post is enough to power a whole room full of returned Kindle Fires.
I don't quite get the fuss. I own the Fire. I knew the limitations when I bought it, and expected it to have a few bugs, which it does. I use it all the time, and pretty happy for my 200 bucks worth. I didn't expect it to keep up with a quad core box, or even the iPad, I expected it to display books, show movies, do light surfing, play casual games, all of which it does ok. It *does* need some updates to the software to work the bugs out, but every computer I have ever bought needed both hardware BIOS upgrades and OS upgrades, so the idea that a new to the market tablet has a few bugs shouldn't come to a surprise to anyone.
If anything, people were oversold on what the tablet was. It was exactly what I expected, and I'm guessing it was exactly what most people expected since the majority of owners are happy with it. What I'm finding is several publications talking bad about the tablet, but the owners I know are all happy. Go figure.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
But don't worry, you'll figure it out sooner or later, as Android tablet manufacturers will eat Apple's lunch.
They sure will.
The only problem for them is that Apple has already moved on to dinner.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley