Maybe I'm not sufficiently hardware-savvy, but what's the downside here?
I am more or less in the market for a modest tablet, but I'm indifferent to whether it comes from Amazon. Can someone recommend a better deal?
I am more or less in the market for a modest tablet, but I'm indifferent to whether it comes from Amazon. Can someone recommend a better deal?
If you want to do basic web surfing stuff, this is a phenomenal deal. I doubt you'll find a better one.
If you want to experience all that modern Android tablets are capable of, these tablets will not provide that. In particular anything related to Google services (mail/apps) and Android apps that are delivered through the Google Play store but not delivered though the Amazon store. There are a lot of mainstream apps that don't bother to push their apps to Amazon's store.
got a Xoom 2ME here. decent hardware, but I never got a new OS on it
all Samsung phones can only be flashed because someone leaked a internal tool. and still, there must be a huge community effort to get the kernel and drives for each model.
now keep in mind that this huge community effort doesn't exist even for for-developers v phones, such was the case with the moto x dev edition. with phones like fire, it's practically non existent!
Android devices are not open by any means. they just have a lovely stubborn community.
The first-generation Fire tablets definitely support Cyanogenmod, though it was a bit awkward to get around the bootloader lock at first. Are the newer ones not supported?
If you want an ereader get a paperwhite imo. But if you actually want a screen tablet this may not be a bad bet. There are lots of good cheap android devices these days too. Fire does run android but in my dev shop we treat fire with special care due to both the heavy modification and different store.
It's not a pure android device so you're going to be very much locked in to the amazon market.
edit: It looks like they've got the same situation vis-a-vis ads as all Kindles - yes they have ads, there is some attempt to make them unobtrusive, and they only have ads in the US.
http://www.zdnet.com/article/all-kindle-fire-hd-models-ad-su...
So that explains that. Now to find out how hard flashing a new OS would be. :)
Its not some free magical data flying around on its own.
Also note that the HD 6 and HD 7 are still not flashable, and they've been out for some time. Amazon seems to have gone out of their way to make this a difficult device to tinker on.
My recommendation is to find a well-treated used Nexus 7 and you will have a much better time of things. They are much easier to flash with better ROM support. Please don't buy this thing with the expectation of enjoying some weekend tinkering - it's not worth your time.
(I suppose I'll caveat that the one scenario where it would make sense to get it now would be that v1 firmwares contain bugs that will make your life easier when exploits are found, but still - probably not worth it)