Kindle Fire HD Q&A thread (read me)

Jerry Hildenbrand

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Oct 11, 2009
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Phil has the Fire HD 8.9 coming his way soon.
I have the Fire HD 7 coming soon.

We're going to review them of course, so we're asking you guys just what you want us to take a look at. These are quite different from a "normal" Android tablet, so we want to engage the hive-mind to make sure we don't miss anything.

Flood us with questions, ideas, commentary, you name it. Be thoughtful, as we're planning on a straight up Q&A post once they're in our filthy hands.

And yes, after the review I certainly plan on breaking it open and trying to put stock Android on it.

Warranty be damned :)
 

Channan

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I've been looking on so many different sites. I'm shocked no one has clarified. Obviously the 8.9" Fire will have the 1920x1200 display but the 7" is also being called the Fire HD. I'm assuming it's only 1280x800, right?
 

millerliteboy

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I'm reading that the 8.9 has a TI OMAP4470 ... Amazon lists its processor at dual core1.5GHz but the Specs from Texas Instruments (from what I've found) lists the 4470 at dual core 1.8GHZ. Any reason for the discrepancy?
 

GalaxyNole

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I'm curious of the Kindle's color depth, I saw the Nexus 7 and felt the colors were kinda washed-out. I love the colors I get from my GS3 and would like a tablet that compares to it.
 

treogables

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A few thoughts; Once you all have those tablets in your hands, it would be interesting to consider the usability and feel of the 8.9 in comparison to the 7", always keeping in mind the 10.1" tablets. Point being -- is the 8.9" a size that a future Google Nexus tablet should shoot for. For the record, I really love the idea of 8.9" size; not too big not too small.

The second thing I would like to hear about focuses more on the use and purpose of the 4G built-in to the tablet. This was a discussion that was started a few days back when the possibility of the Nexus 7 w/ 3g was announced. Ironically enough, I had suggested at that time that if Google was to model the pricing of the 3G service after the original Kindle (where it was included in the price), that would make a lot of sense. Here were are a few days later and, for $50, the new Kindle Fire 8.9" will come with 4G service for the year. It was my thinking that 3G or 4G, having built-in cellular service was to serve primarily as a bridge-gap to allow consistent connectivity for dependent applications as the end-user moves between WiFi access. Certainly, most of the streaming and downloading would be done over WiFi but as one moves around, like driving in a car or traveling, the user would not have to sacrifice the functionality of such things like Google Maps or checking e-mail.

Finally, at these price points, are these the type of tablets that could be purchased to have 3rd party OSs installed (re: cyanogenmod) or are we better off looking at other alternatives.

Many thanks and sorry for the longer than intended discussion.
 

Joe the Insider

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How do app's look on the 8.9 Fire HD. Im curious since, its a different size and most apps are made to fit on phones or 7".

Battery life & how smooth is it overall (The OS)
 
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I haven't seen clarified anywhere, but are all new versions locked down with Amazon's skinned version of Android? What OS are they built off of? Are all OS's the same across the new models? Any news if the original Fire will receive any significant OS updates coming from these new iterations?
 

dmmarck

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I haven't seen clarified anywhere, but are all new versions locked down with Amazon's skinned version of Android? What OS are they built off of? Are all OS's the same across the new models? Any news if the original Fire will receive any significant OS updates coming from these new iterations?

It's a heavily modified form of ICS. Emphasis on heavy.

Sent from my Overly Suspicious Robotic Grouper
 

sholling

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A few thoughts; Once you all have those tablets in your hands, it would be interesting to consider the usability and feel of the 8.9 in comparison to the 7", always keeping in mind the 10.1" tablets. Point being -- is the 8.9" a size that a future Google Nexus tablet should shoot for. For the record, I really love the idea of 8.9" size; not too big not too small.
I agree wholeheartedly 8.9" and 20oz or less is the Goldilocks size for a tablet. A baby bear 7" tablet is fine for reading books or playing most Android games and even watching a video (barely) but it sucks for reading news on magazine style news aggregation sites or for magazines or even surfing the web and playing on forums. One the other hand a big pappa bear 10" is too big and clumsy and heavy for use reading a book with only one hand (the beer hand must be free). The nice thing about the Amazon environment is they (unlike Google) are in a position to require app developers to certify that their product is optimized for a 7" Fire HD display or certified to be optimized for a 1900x1200 8.9" display which is what has been Apple's one and only advantage over Android tablets. Apple iPad apps are optimized for a 9.7 Retina display and as a result of that optimization look freaking great. Android tablet sizes and resolutions are all over the place and as a result tablet apps look funky and run flaky. Amazon cures that and if Google has an ounce of sense they will copy the Fire HD resolutions and sizes instead of one-upping them and make those sizes and resolutions standards for tablet apps on the Play store.

I preordered 32GB WifFi-only 8.9" Fire HD for late November delivery. Of course if the reviews suck or Google releases a <20oz 32GB 9" Nexus 9 with 1920x1280 display between now and the time my Fire HD ships I'll cancel and go with Google. But for my needs the OS matters far-far-far less than it doing the job I want it to do and I like the functionality built into the Fire HD. What I hate is Amazon forcing advertizing onto a $370 tablet! That really and truly sucks great big spoiled bananas! It was really hard to justify paying that much for an advertizing player and I may cancel just because of that.
 

dmmarck

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I agree wholeheartedly 8.9" and 20oz or less is the Goldilocks size for a tablet. A baby bear 7" tablet is fine for reading books or playing most Android games and even watching a video (barely) but it sucks for reading news on magazine style news aggregation sites or for magazines or even surfing the web and playing on forums. One the other hand a big pappa bear 10" is too big and clumsy and heavy for use reading a book with only one hand (the beer hand must be free). The nice thing about the Amazon environment is they (unlike Google) are in a position to require app developers to certify that their product is optimized for a 7" Fire HD display or certified to be optimized for a 1900x1200 8.9" display which is what has been Apple's one and only advantage over Android tablets. Apple iPad apps are optimized for a 9.7 Retina display and as a result of that optimization look freaking great. Android tablet sizes and resolutions are all over the place and as a result tablet apps look funky and run flaky. Amazon cures that and if Google has an ounce of sense they will copy the Fire HD resolutions and sizes instead of one-upping them and make those sizes and resolutions standards for tablet apps on the Play store.

I preordered 32GB WifFi-only 8.9" Fire HD for late November delivery. Of course if the reviews suck or Google releases a <20oz 32GB 9" Nexus 9 with 1920x1280 display between now and the time my Fire HD ships I'll cancel and go with Google. But for my needs the OS matters far-far-far less than it doing the job I want it to do and I like the functionality built into the Fire HD. What I hate is Amazon forcing advertizing onto a $370 tablet! That really and truly sucks great big spoiled bananas! It was really hard to justify paying that much for an advertizing player and I may cancel just because of that.

Sorta disagree. I think 7 inches is perfect for Internet browsing.

Sent from my Overly Suspicious Robotic Grouper
 

DrDoppio

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I was expecting that Samsung will upgrade their 8.9" tablet to 1920x1200 sooner or later, and was looking forward to buying that. It is more or less the perfect form factor currently: not too big, not too small, 16:10, matching 1080p width (perfect for hi-def video with two thin balck bars for the viewing controls). I guess Amazon got there first, pity that it's US only again. I might still grab one, but I'm afraid it won't function properly in Europe...

Questions that I have:
1. What hardware controls are there on the device?
2. How hackable will it be? (I guess that's too early to know yet).
 

jnb5531

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Im curious to see if the 8.9 hd will be available on other carriers. Att lte network has a long way to go and also the 150mb limit per month is dissapointing.
 

ttlphotography

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Few things come to mind. 1st the good.
1. Love the 8.9" form factor. Was sold on the size when i saw samsungs 8.9" tab. So imho, thats the perfect all around size.....at least for my needs anyway.

Now on to what i'd like to see whats up with the new Fire HD.
1. Battery life. Think we all start with that for the most part.
2. Is the stuttery lag or lack of smoothness in page changes and so forth gone from the brow beaten version of the android OS this time around?
3. Can we hack it and put clean ICS or JB on it to eliminate #2 and/or to make it not so heavily customized?
4. How obnoxious are these ads being forced on us? If they end up leaning towards the "in our face" style, thats a deal breaker for me. Dont care how cool or wiz bang it is, there are other options out there.
5. And lastly . . .. what is up with what appears to be a humongoginormous screen bezel on these? It looks like theres at least an inch of dead black space around the screen on all models. 7" or 8.9" screen isnt really those numbers if a good size chunk of that math isnt viewable. While the screens physical dimensions may be those numbers, just seems a tad on the sketchy/marketing side to say 1 number and make the viewable area, in my view, a good deal smaller than that. I understand some sort of blanking real estate, but from the pix and videos, it just seems excessively large and unnecessary.
Thanks
Tom
 

etnpnys

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How does the CPU/GPU performance truly compare to the Tegra3?

Not benchmark-wise, but real performance and perception. It's my guess that it's nowhere near as powerful (especially in games), but that they threw the extra 1GB of RAM in there at the last minute to have something to one-up the Nexus7 on. And that extra RAM may provide a smoother experience than the first-gen KF but how is it REALLY?
 

mgfjd12

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I can carry a 7' tablet in my jeans, pants, or short pockets. No need to keep an extra bag. That is the perfect size. 8.9' is laptop replacement . No mobility at all.
 

etnpnys

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I'm also very interested in the FreeTime functionality. Is it invasive? Do you feel like a bad parent putting that fence around your kids? (That one is for Phil)
 

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