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Comment by blinkingled | Hacker News Reader

"based on Android 2.1"

Ugh. Android is after all cursed on the Tablet and Amazon is just doing their bit. Very disappointing - ridiculous in fact given there should be literally no excuse to put 2.1 on modern hardware.

Oh and no Email client and no Google integration if that wasn't enough.

[Edit] Consider JIT (2.2+) and low pause GC (2.3+) that they will be missing. Also consider Flash support which is also 2.2+. Then there is competition from the likes of Archos and you can take their $299 Honeycomb 3.2 tablet and run everything Amazon has to offer on it - Kindle, MP3, Instant video etc.

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Very disappointing - ridiculous in fact given there should be literally no excuse to put 2.1 on modern hardware.

Amazon's a pretty big SW company. I wouldn't be surprised if they started their fork with 2.1, but will bare no resemblance to it. Amazon may have their own internal Android fork built up now and may not merge back with the Google version of Android.

I don't think Amazon wants Google to control their destiny. And considering what Google has done in their 3.x branch (none of which is very impressive), Amazon may well believe they can out execute Google. And considering how few Android tablets have shipped, Amazon could really quickly dominate the Android tablet market -- and then be the one calling the shots.

Sure, but what happens when Google's Android market place remains dominant, they release new versions of Android for Tablet and SmartPhone that become incompatible with Amazon's version of Amadroid? It doesn't have to be forever - if new games, new high-demand software is released for Android phones and Tabelts, even if it takes 6 months for Amazon to make their OS compatible and 6 more for app developers to put out their apps on Amazon App Store - they lose. Amazon doesn't make phones - Google and its partners do and that's where most of the Android app ecosystem is focused.

I honestly don't think Amazon will take that risk - their changes are going to be cleanly designed such that they can pull Google's AOSP code, merge their changes and crank out their own updates. I can't see Amazon developing 2.1 code base without merging Google's bits from newer releases - there is just no way they are going to be able to catch up with all the stuff Google and co. are putting in Android - they will never have that kind of expertise unless they hire people from Google/Android team which I find somewhat far fetched.

Keeping up with the releases from 2.1 and going to 4.0 is going to be a huge pain. And that will be required for compatibility sooner or later.

> Sure, but what happens when Google's Android market place remains dominant, they release new versions of Android for Tablet and SmartPhone that become incompatible with Amazon's version of Amadroid?

Nothing will happen. Kindle Fire users will continue to read their books, watch their movies / tv shows and browse the web as before. This is being marketed as a Kindle for a reason.

2.1 isn't surprising, since they forked a while ago.

The GUI will be completely Amazon-built, so the the version of Android probably won't matter all that much to end-users.

Since this is all speculation, we'll have to see when the device is unveiled.

Except for the massive speed difference that comes from the JIT which arrived in 2.2

There's really only two tablet speeds; "smooth" (ipad) and "jaggy" (android).

If amazon makes their tablet "smooth" then that will be an achievement independently and despite of android - not due to a specific android version.

And before the android-fanboys crawl out of the woodwork: The "next version" is always supposed to finally solve the lags, by virtue of some awesome software-fix or raw dual-core power.

However, just today I used an SGS2. The latest "next version", dual-core and all. And guess what: It lagged.

Having used an SGS2 (the Sprint variant) for the past few days, you're crazy. If anything, it's almost a little too fast.

Give it a few weeks. It has an unfortunate tendency to degrade over time.

> Very disappointing - ridiculous in fact given there should be literally no excuse to put 2.1 on a modern hardware.

There's a more than reasonable reason:

Perhaps Amazon's project froze that portion of the code at some point during 2010. They're shipping v1 of a brand new product based on heavily customized code. At some point, you need to eliminate moving targets if you're ever going to ship.

Amazon's use of Android here is almost an implementation detail. They want to sell you a Kindle so you'll buy content. They're not trying to sell an Android tablet. As a result, I think they're going to sell a ton of them. Enough to make Apple sweat a bit. Very exciting.

Corresponding edit:

>[Edit] Consider JIT (2.2+) and low pause GC (2.3+) that they will be missing. Also consider Flash support which is also 2.2+. Then there is competition from the likes of Archos and you can take their $299 Honeycomb 3.2 tablet and run everything Amazon has to offer on it - Kindle, MP3, Instant video etc.

"No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame."

Which is why it's 7", and why it doesn't have an email client on it. They're directly competing with the Nook Color, and positioning themselves as a multimedia tablet that's cheaper than an iPad.

Which is in my opinion a much better idea than trying to compete on price, features AND software with the iPad. Get a couple clear differentiators - price, Kindle bookstore, multimedia content, etc - and actually compete.

Is Kindle bookstore really a differentiator? What will Kindle bookstore do that Kindle for iPad does not?

Well for starters it will be an integrated experience, something Apple has made sure Amazon can't do on iPad. Amazon also has a lot more than books to fill the Fire with--they have a much more extensive collection of video than Apple (including free streaming content for Prime members).

Got it. Thanks.

That line of reasoning might fly for a $100 tablet. For a $300 tablet, it does not.

> That line of reasoning might fly for a $100 tablet. For a $300 tablet, it does not.

I agree completely.

But this isn't a tablet. This is a Kindle. That's why it's the "Kindle Fire" not the "Amazon 7" Tablet Buddy Pro S 1.0." It's going to be exceptionally good at doing Kindle things: reading books, listening to music, streaming movies – and paying for the privilege.

They're going to sell a shitload of these things. They know how to make a great experience around content.

Unless it uses color eInk, it is not going to be that good at reading books.

I love eInk, but after reading the entire "A Song of Ice and Fire" series (all 5000+ pages) on my iPod Touch using the Kindle app, I think the right form factor and good software make a big difference.

Little-known fact: the Nook Color (vastly) outsells the e-ink Nook.

I was surprised too.

Maybe people who want e-ink just buy a Kindle.

Or maybe people who want e-ink are a single-digit percentage of the market.

If a consumer does research, as I did, and looks for comparison of the eInk of the Nook and of the Kindle, you quickly discover side by side photos of the Nook and Kindle and conclude that the Kindle eInk is better (it does use a more current version of eInk than the Nook after all). If you wanted color - you with w/ the Nook because that was the option you had out of the big two, otherwise, with the Kindle.

eInk isn't the best solution in a lot of instances. A back-lit display is a lot more visually accessible.

http://kellishaver.tumblr.com/post/10646083786/my-ipad

That's exactly right. Even the cheapest Android tablets from Archos feature 3.2 - 80 G9 for instance at $299. And you can have Kindle, Amazon MP3 and Instant Video on it as it supports Flash. So why would I want to buy a $300 Amazon tablet?

That's not to say it won't sell well - brand and integration might make it work and Amazon never discloses how many Kindles they sell - but it's hard to argue Apple is going to sweat. B&N may be but not Apple and not any other Android Tablet maker.

Were you guys asleep when iPad launched to almost identical criticism, then sold 30 million units?

The game is not about specs anymore. It's about experience.

Amazon has banked a lot of credibility with regard to making great portable hardware and streamlining the content consumption experience. You're seeing this the wrong way around.

People aren't going to buy this because they want a tablet. You and a few hundred thousand other people (technophiles) are the only ones who care about "tablets" that aren't the iPad.

People are going to buy this because they love reading books and love watching movies. And oh, what a convenient and neat way to accomplish that task! What a great gift! etc.

It's going to feel good to use. If that didn't matter to Amazon, it would be running the latest OS they could slap on it, it'd have a spec sheet a mile long, and it would cost a nose more than the iPad.

But that's not their game. They're coming at it from the opposite direction.

And fucking finally – Apple will have a competitor in this space who isn't a complete joke. I'm very, very excited to watch this unfold.

I never understood why people insist on intentionally crippled specs before jumping on the experience is everything bandwagon.

Amazon has good specs for the hardware there - it would not have altered their proposition drastically to ship modern OS on it along with support for Email client and many other experience enhancing things that it comes with - UI acceleration, more app compatibility etc. It's nearly free for them. At $300 price point it behooves them to make it a full tablet along with a reader and media player. Without that it's just not a good value in my mind.

"to ship modern OS"

Amazon's customizations are purportedly deeper and better then Honeycomb. Proof will be in the pudding of course but if you were doing a significant fork you can't just keep restarting over and over to incorporate everything Google is doing too.

In that case it would be a huge gaffe on Amazon's part. Amazon will have to be responsible for the full OS and it will be a nightmare for them to integrate whatever Google is pushing out every 6 months, including security fixes.

But let's put that aside - think about compatibility from user stand point. Google's app store is still the main Android app store and is likely to be so going forward. If Google and its partners start pushing out newer releases that Amazon fails to incorporate in their 2.1 tree - users are going to miss out on apps - when they have a 2011 era dual core hardware that they paid $300 for.

Again if this was $100-$179 it would be OK - $300 is what makes this not attractive.

Keep in mind that it wouldn't be particularly difficult for the Kindle tablet to outsell all the other Android tablets put together. If that proves to be the case, why would they have any difficulty attracting apps?

> It's nearly free for them.

Prove it.

Walk us through the level of customization Amazon has done here, explain at a high level the goals and tradeoffs they sought in forking Android, and show how the product would have shipped on-time, for the holidays, by making the simple change of completely replacing the operating system they'd already spent so much time to customize.

I really don't think you're hearing me, here. This isn't an "Android tablet." This is Amazon's Kindle, which will succeed on its own merits, and just happens to have some deep technical underpinnings in Android.

This isn't about the specs. This is about taking some raw material and shaping it into something that meets their goals. They've done that. Can it be even more impressive? Always. And I'm sure at some point they'll merge in a bunch of the technical junk that only 0.1% of their users care about, in the furtherance of the experience.

But I think, out of the box, they're already going to be heads-and-shoulders above their "competition," such as it is.

I get what you are trying to say - believe me, I do. I just don't think that at $300 this is a good value. This may be Android tablet or a non-Android Kindle - $300 is not something ( I think ) people will pay for a limited thing that looks like all the other tablets but doesn't quite work like it. At $179 may be you have a point. But as you approach the Archos to iPad price range you can't just sell experience to people - you have to sell experience and all the regular stuff competition ships, you know like an email client! There is no excuse for omitting a great email client at that price range.

You seriously think Apple would have sold as many iPads if they sold it with iOS 1.x version of the browser and no email client, purely based on experience? I don't think so.

So again - our debate here is about price, features and experience. You can change the order but I think excluding any one or more thing at $300 is not really a good thing.

And you and me can argue to no end that it's not Android or it doesn't really matter that it's Android - but Amazon has an "Android" App Store and they sell apps through that and people are going to be expecting to see some apps that they won't either due to them not being compatible or not on the Amazon app store or in the best case just not working good enough due to running on an older OS with deep 3rd party customizations.

And upgrades being nearly free for Amazon - It's Google's code, they just have to rebase and deal with kernel/hardware bits just like every other vendor. The customizations probably are all Java and easily mergeable atop newer AOSP releases - if they aren't then that's bad news already. But let me be clear that even if it wasn't nearly free - as a user I don't really care - I want a reasonably secure and updated OS with no artificial limitations if I am paying $300.

To be fair, you're not the target market for this device.

Hardware specs are the only thing you're truly locked into, as you'll receive firmware updates after the fact. Also, consider that even a $500 price point is not so terribly high. It's above the "I want it, don't even think, just buy it" threshold of most folks but it's pretty far down the discretionary spending ladder. In inflation adjusted dollars it's about 1/10th of the launch price of the Apple II for example. Sometimes the value of having and using something you want for several months or a year outweighs the disadvantages of a prematurely purchase.

Enough to make Apple sweat a bit.

Rest assured, nothing based on Android 2.1 is going to do that.

I'm not an Android dev (yet), but does it matter much outside of the UI? Honeycomb isn't open source, so 2.* is all they can use without talking to Google.

Seeing as how Ice Cream Sandwich is meant to better unify the APIs, I don't mind if they skip Honeycomb as long as they do get on track eventually.

It matters a bit. With 2.2 (Froyo), they added a JIT Compiler that, in my experience (upgrading from 2.1 to 2.2), resulted in a drastic performance improvement.

[Edit: This was on my phone. Sibling response from stonemetal provides interesting counterpoint.]

When the nook went from 2.1 to 2.2 there wasn't a noticeable difference in responsiveness. So my guess is it was a big benchmark win but not a big usability win unless you were trying to do number crunching on a tablet.

I had noticeably less UI stutter and freezes going from 2.1 to 2.2 on my Nexus One. 2.3 made it a new phone - the low pause GC really makes a difference for UI responsiveness.

yes android 2.2 and 2.3 introduces significant performance improvements, that are definitely noticeable. Just moving from froyo to gingerbread, feels like a new phone.

Ditto. I wasn't expecting much from Gingerbread on my G2 and I was pleasantly surprised.

Notice their choice in words- it is based on Android 2.1. They didn't say it runs Android 2.1.

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