How "locked down" are Amazon Tablets?

[whitenack]

My 8 year old is wanting a tablet for Christmas and I see some refurb Fire HD 6 for a great price, but don't know anything about Amazon tablets. Are they completely isolated from the Google ecosystem?

 

[nahoku]

Google is everywhere. "Isolated"... what does that mean? Any child that owns a tablet with internet capability will never be isolated from Google.

Better were the days when kids played outside for entertainment.

 

[whitenack]

Thanks for the reply and the opinion. I agree. We live on a farm and the kids play outside every day.

By isolated, I mean from Google Play and other Google services.

 

[nahoku]

Thanks for the reply and the opinion. I agree. We live on a farm and the kids play outside every day.

By isolated, I mean from Google Play and other Google services.

Sounds great that they can play on the farm... much better than having their face glued to a tablet all day! Google Play and Play Services aren't natively installed, however there are tutorials that can install them. Of course if you don't want them on the tablet, then you don't have to worry about it.

 

[natehoy]

By isolated, I mean from Google Play and other Google services.

I picked up a pair of the $33 special Amazon Fire 7" tablets during the Black Friday deal. Found a script that autoinstalled the Play Store and Google Apps services, and was on my account in Hangouts and playing games and stuff from the Play Store in about 15 minutes. It doesn't include them, but they are really, REALLY easy to add.

Amazon doesn't appear to lock the device down in any way that I can see. If you don't like Amazon's take on Android you can even load Cyanogen, Nexus, Resurrection-Remix, and several others.

[Index]Amazon Fire 7" - 5th Gen-2015 | Amazon Fire