
Amazon's New $50 Fire Tablet - bsilvereagle
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00TSUGXKE/
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Zelphyr
Everything Amazon does with the Fire product line I find to be terrible. The
Kindle Paperwhite is a delight to use but the Fire is beyond frustrating and,
often as not, feels like a device designed for the sole purpose of parting me
with my money on Amazon other products.

My 7 year old got a Kids Kindle Fire. I have 20+ years software engineering
experience yet I have more trouble trying to do the most basic things with
that device. Its infuriating.

We got the Fire TV Stick figuring it would be a good alternative to the Roku.
Its not. Most of the time it couldn't keep a connection to wifi.

I don't know what Amazon is thinking but, in my opinion, their reputation is
suffering badly because of their handling of the Fire product line. I know
personally I will never buy another Fire product.

~~~
calm_245
The Fire TV stick is the best $ I've spent on a TV device. I love it - fast,
responsive, does not drop connections, and has all the apps I want.

I've used Boxee, Google TV, Roku, Chromecast, and (XMBC on Raspberry Pi) and
none of those compare to the FireTV stick. It blows them out of the water.

Boxee was my favorite until the team building it deserted it

~~~
JohnTHaller
One nice thing about the Roku is that it searches across multiple apps for
content. The Amazon TV devices put Amazon content front and center, making you
think you have to buy a video when you already have access to it via Netflix
without having to pay more.

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deng
Before people buy stuff like this and expect to be able to install Cyanogen in
a few months:

[http://forum.xda-developers.com/fire-hd/general/psa-dont-
buy...](http://forum.xda-developers.com/fire-hd/general/psa-dont-buy-one-
cheap-tablet-expect-t2890763)

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kyriakos
You can find Chinese tablets for a similar price with better specs and
cleaner/closer to stock android rom with Google services. If your plan is to
get this in order to try and flash cyanogen or something similar then you
won't mind the dodgy Chinese warranty.

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borkabrak
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?

~~~
bsilvereagle
From what I could tell, (at least) the $50 Fire is currently ad supported, and
by default Amazon Underground is ad supported as well.

~~~
borkabrak
Ouch. This one landed. If this is true, then I think it would turn me off the
deal. Unless I wanted to try what someone else mentioned and flash it with
CyanogenMod or something. Never done that before, but this might be a good way
to start..

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...](http://www.zdnet.com/article/all-kindle-fire-hd-models-ad-supported-
but-only-in-the-us/)

So that explains that. Now to find out how hard flashing a new OS would be. :)

~~~
eclipxe
Just ads on lockscreen...not too bad.

~~~
bsilvereagle
Ads on the lockscreen may be fine from a UX perspective, however, that tablet
is now using data when it's a sleep which becomes a factor when someone is on
a capped connection. Sure, it may only be a handful of MB/month, but to some
people, every MB counts.

~~~
semi-extrinsic
I believe this thing only has wifi, so that's not a relevant problem.

~~~
jugad
This might come as news, but wifi data is still data and counts towards the
data cap.

Its not some free magical data flying around on its own.

~~~
semi-extrinsic
In what third-world country do you have to live for your home DSL (or fiber or
whatever) to have a data cap? Even back in the olden days of dial-up that
would be laughable on the face of it.

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Ethan_Mick
What does this mean for Amazon's Fire HD 6" Tablet[0]? Looking it now, the new
Fire tablet is about the same in every way (screen resolution lacking), but at
$50 more, I'm not sure the better screen resolution will win many people over.

The new Fire Tablet even has features the 6" one is missing! Mayday and an SD
card slot.

[0] -
[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00KC6I06S/](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00KC6I06S/)

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thecrumb
Wonder if you could root this and install Cyanogen or something?

~~~
dharma1
i guess if it's a standard chipset and unlocked bootloader, give it a couple
of months. You can get a decent tablet for not very much more though

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ja27
Amazon quietly does pretty good business with some school districts. We've
made several 1,000+ unit bulk sales of educational apps through them. It's not
iPad numbers, but it's a lot better than we thought.

This device will slip perfectly into that role.

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toxican
Interesting. Very tempting as-is, but we'll have to see where we're at with
Cyanogen Mod support in a few months before I'll buy one. Though I realize I'm
not the target demographic for this by any means.

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Mithaldu
I'm unsure about the hardware capabilities of this. I understand that the
display cannot display 1080p.

However, if i do copy a 1080p mp4 file with subtitles onto it, is it likely
that this one will be able to play it?

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pavornyoh
With all the things on the market, why is Amazon doing this? 50 bucks? I am
really trying to understand why..

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ausjke
looks great, if it supports touch-pen it will be perfect for school kids.

~~~
Turing_Machine
Indeed. You'd feel a lot better about turning a little kid loose with a $50
Fire tablet than a $500 iPad.

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zkhalique
I like how it puts ads on the lock screen to offset costs

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isaacagh
Does anyone knows if this comes with a Snapdragon CPU?

~~~
rasz_pl
most likely mediatek or maybe even allwinner

~~~
Splines
mediatek: [http://bgr.com/2015/09/16/amazon-tablet-
specs-50-dollars/](http://bgr.com/2015/09/16/amazon-tablet-specs-50-dollars/)

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dacox
Amazon! Won't ship to lonely old Canada.

~~~
quinndupont
Can anyone else confirm? Seems to have added to my basket (on Amazon.com, but
with Canadian account). Now, with a $.70CAD->USD conversion...

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byron_fast
It would be more interesting if Amazon put Flash on it instead of making it a
spam delivery device. Swim upstream.

Less work than Amazon Underground, more free games.

~~~
Splines
AFAIK Adobe stopped supporting flash on Android some time ago. It would be a
considerable engineering effort to get it working again. Plus, (again, AFAIK)
flash it not common among touch devices and I would be surprised if all games
would work easily without a mouse.

That aside, what if Amazon got it working? What then? Free content doesn't
help Amazon any.

The Fire tablets are not just about games/apps - it's about tying the user
into the rest of Amazon's media ecosystem. Video, books and shopping. It's
Amazon's equivalent of free parking.

~~~
byron_fast
If free content doesn't help, why spend time on Amazon Underground? My point
is: do something different. A low-rent imitation of everything else has so far
cost them a fortune. The original Fire had a Flash plugin. I'm sure they could
get it working for the cost of about 12 minutes of Prime losses.

~~~
Splines
To clarify - free content not on Amazon doesn't help Amazon any. Getting more
people on Amazon Underground is absolutely helpful. It increases customer
mindshare of Amazon apps, increases lock-in and increases the cost of moving
over to the Play Store with a different device. This translates into more
usage of the Fire devices, which funnels users into shopping more on
Amazon.com.

Getting flash working (and working well) would be great for customers. Just
not for Amazon.

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protomyth
Mono speaker? I guess they expect everyone to use headphones.

~~~
ceejayoz
No, they expect anyone who cares to pay more than $50.

~~~
protomyth
If your saying its "built for entertainment", a mono speaker doesn't go with
that.

~~~
semi-extrinsic
You're not going to get any sort of audio fidelity from the speakers in a
tablet, so anyone who wants that is already using headphones. Thus it's likely
that the people using that speakers can't hear the difference between
mono/stereo for the content they care about.

~~~
Turing_Machine
Exactly. Even on the higher-end iPads the built-in speakers are pretty much
crap for any kind of serious listening.

Not to mention that the stereo separation you're going to get on a 7" tablet
is going to be minimal anyway.

~~~
protomyth
There's a difference between "serious listening" and having left and right
channels in a tablet. A person can tell left and right on a 7" device held as
close as a tablet. Audio clues matter.

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webwanderings
Never going to buy a 7" no matter how cheap it gets. The screen resolution is
not worth it.

~~~
webwanderings
Don't just down-vote dammit, give me an argument if you care so much to click.

The people are being hoodwinked into buying these so-called "tablets" of
smaller sizes, where as, none of these should be called tablets, rather, they
are just a bigger size phones with no traditional calling features. Amazon or
no Amazon, you would be wasting your time, energy and $$ if you buy a tablet
with anything less than 1024x768 resolution. Just don't.

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atomi
My Nexus 7 from 3 years ago has better specs and cost only slightly more. Who
buys this junk?

~~~
EA
Parents. It comes with a two-year "no questions asked" warranty and free
access to tons of media curated by an independent third party.

~~~
Osiris
Actually, the "no questions asked" warranty is only on the "Kids edition"
which is $100. The Kids edition is the $50 tablet + a case + "FreeTime", and
the 2 year replacement warranty.

~~~
jay_kyburz
I don't want my kids bombarded with ads for crap on Amazon.

~~~
Turing_Machine
Then you can pay an extra $15 and get one that doesn't bombard your kids with
ads for crap on Amazon.

