Amazon updates the Fire HD 10 tablet with a 1080p display and a much lower price | Hacker News Reader

Amazon updates the Fire HD 10 tablet with a 1080p display and a much lower price

amazon.com

25 pointsNitishshah70029 comments

Still tied to Amazon's lesser app store which is severely lacking compared to Google Play. Yes, you can get Play Service and apps onto it, but it's annoying and unsupported, so not something you'd want to give to your parents.

Alexa Hands-Free seems to be the big new feature. Even with the screen off, you can use it as an Echo device just by calling out the Alexa wake word. That might make this like a cheaper, more portable Echo Show device... and with more functionality, since it's also a tablet.

Unfortunately Alexa Hands-Free is only on the HD 10 unit for now, not the smaller tablets.

Does HN allow posting referral ad links to products on Amazon like this?

How do these compare performance wise to other tablets (like an ipad)? I had one of these a few generations ago, and it was painfully slow. Though I could see at $79 one of the 8" being a great price for travel or watching in bed netflix.

Very curious about this also. I tried out a tablet last year and was shocked at how slow it was. Best I could tell, it was good for reading Kindle books, watching Amazon Prime shows, and shopping on Amazon.com. At the time, it was basically an "Amazon tablet", not a general purpose tablet.

Hope this generation is faster, but based on their price points I'm guessing it'll be similar to previous generations.

edit: per Ars, the processor is 30% faster. Not likely to make a huge difference in usability, but a welcome upgrade nonetheless.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/09/amazon-fire-hd-10-pr...

I noticed in the comparison table that the smaller Kindle Fires come with only 90 day warranties. Makes you wonder about the build quality. Really, Amazon?

My 3 year old has had a kindle fire 7 (standard one not the kid case version) he can use to play games and watch shows in the mornings rather than have the TV on. Bought it for £29 at Xmas and at that price didn't bother buying any protective case or screen protector. Thing is like a tank. It's been thrown, stamped on, was the primary target of projectile vomit twice, juice spilled, food rubbed into crevices. It has 1 minor scratch but other than that it's solid.

How about the charging cable? I once bought couple of cheap tablets (not Amazon) and both had the same problem: the USB charging cable breaks off (sometimes from the mother board itself, or it gets loose).

The iPad on the other hand, does not have this problem.

This could replace my aging iPad mini that I have double side taped to my fridge. It's perfect for setting timers and grocery lists and things.

You use an iPad as a grocery list?

What ever happened to paper taped to the fridge? and... you know... an egg timer?

Those require hands. Plus I have very limited counter space in my tiny kitchen.

I'm so sorry for making assumptions!

iPad-based grocery list syncs to the cloud so you always have it when you're at the store.

So crude. So effective.

I've been considering low cost, easy methods to mount cheap, interconnected tablets (or even cheap touch displays hooked into an rPi) in a few different points around the house. It never occurred to me to just tape the damn thing to the fridge.

Double-sided velcro tape works pretty well. Put the soft side on the tablet...

3M command strips for picture hanging. Similar to Velcro, can be removed with no damage (as long as you're careful) Rated to 4 lbs per for the big ones.

I use them to stick my networking hardware to the wall to get it out of the way.

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This is really tempting. If Apple hadn't made such great strides in iOS for the iPad over the past three releases I would jump on this in a heartbeat.

But I live my life in a combination of the Apple and Google ecosystem and this supports neither.

Does LineageOS run on it?

> CPU & RAM: MediaTek Quad-Core: 2 @ 1.8 GHz + 2 @ 1.4 GHz , with 2 GB of RAM

Mediatek... You shouldn't wait LineageOS for it. Neither any updates.

These tablets, given their price point and availability, seem like fantastic platforms for hacking on. Anyone know why they haven't seen more adoption for that use case?

At least in the past, they've been stupendously locked down with bootloaders that were almost impossible to crack. There's be a version or two that was crackable, and then nearly every one purchased would be newer than that.

That's too bad. Makes sense though.

I wonder what the margins are on these, or if there is any margin at all...

Amazon have said [1] in the past that they don't aim to make money from devices, but instead from content sold on those devices.

[1] e.g.: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2216651/We-do...

Seems like there should be some good margin. It's a Mediatek Quad Core Chip at 1.8x2/1.4x2, 2GB RAM, 32GB Flash, single antenna wifi, VGA/2MP camera. I think the case is still plastic as well?

"[Bezos] starts in on the mantras of Amazon’s e-reader and tablet business. Mantra one: premium products at non-premium prices. Mantra two: "We make money when people use our devices." - https://www.theverge.com/2013/9/25/4766878/jeff-bezos-interv...

See for example Rapids (https://rapids.amazon.com), FreeTime Unlimited (https://www.amazon.com/Amazon-FreeTime-Unlimited-Monthly-Sub...), Kindle Unlimited (https://www.amazon.com/kindle-dbs/hz/signup?_encoding=UTF8&*...)

I had no idea they made a 10" tablet...it's on my wishlist now.

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