Amazon Kindle Fire Review

Amazon Kindle Fire Review

The other day I finally got to the Kindle Fire. This is the oldest and quite serious model of readers from Amazon. It seems to me that the release of the color kindle is an extremely logical step by Amazon. It works under the control of android 2.3 gingerbread, but quite beautiful and nimble skin from Amazon is pulled over it.

Preorder & Delivery

I pre-ordered the Kindle Fire the day after its announcement, there were no problems with the order, Amazon accepted my card and promised to deliver it before 11/21/11, they didn’t immediately write off the money, but they warned that by the time of shipment my account should have the necessary amount. It turned out to be a pleasant surprise that my Kindle was delivered to the address in the USA already on 11/15/11, while thanking for the pre-order. So ordering this device is not a problem. And on November 25th I already had the book.

We open the box.

Lies Kindle Fire in a small box made entirely of paper. The box with the book opens spectacularly by tearing off the perforated strip. The kit includes the Kindle itself and a charger (micro-USB). When turned on, we are asked to register and update.

Pulling out the gadget, what we see:

This is a BlackBerry PlayBook, but only from Amazon, its dimensions almost match 190 x 120 x 11.4 mm. Weight is only 413g. Screen resolution 1024x600 IPS LCD 7 ". The screen is bright, but sometimes you notice the flickering of small horizontal stripes on white.



The first thing that struck me was the quality of the materials - for $ 199 we get a very well-assembled gadget and very durable, I did not believe it until the very end. On the back of the device is a soft-touch plastic with a cool Kindle logo. The front panel is completely glossy and as a result is extremely easily soiled, it does not scratch and this is still Gorilla Glass. Around the screen there is a black border and this is a plus for the device, since you don’t hold it and you can’t close the screen with your fingers. At the top there are 2 speakers that play quite decent and loudly. The gadget has only 2 inputs (they are located close to the bottom) - one for charging and transporting files via micro-USB, the second - a 3.5mm headphone input and one physical button - locking the device. Here I miss the volume rocker, but the volume control is easily called up by a slide from top to bottom on the screen.

Under the hood

The Kindle Fire is running a dual-core 1GHz TI OMAP processor, it has only 512 MB of RAM, which is somehow not enough, even the Barnes & Noble 1 Gb Nook Tablet. The internal memory is also not an impressive number of 8 GB of which 6.54 GB is available to me. We only communicate with the outside world via Wi-Fi 802.11b / g / n on 2.4GHz. It is a pity that even this device does not work with my 5 GHz Wi-Fi point.

Device operation

When I turned on, the first thing that bothered me was the quality of the display. Everything turned out to be super, it’s not at the level, for $ 199 it is really good. Viewing angles are wide and the three of them are quite suitable for watching videos. At full brightness, color reproduction is excellent. In some English-language review I read that the backlight pierces the case, but there is nothing like that. Anyway, it already seems to me that those who are angry with the Kindle Fire in a poor-quality assembly have a completely different device than me.

The second question for me was about the battery, whether it works as promised for 8 hours or as it always barely lasts 4. After the first charge, I set the backlight to 80% all the time Wi-Fi was turned on. I watched videos from youtube, watched a football match live, read a bunch of articles and even started reading a book, playing Angry Birds for two hours. Total device lasted 7 hours. Now I no longer torment him with continuous work, but it works as it should for a long time. So yes - everything is fair 8 hours 42 minutes The Kindle should please you without interrupting charging. In general, on physical properties and all. Let's get to the software.

Software

Controlled by Kindle Fire using Android 2.3 Gingerbread. But the whole interface in Amazon was redrawn to its motive, in general, they cut off everything that is possible from it. When you unlock the screen (by the way slide to unlock), you will be pleased with a beautiful screen. On top of which is a carousel with your content, below the thumbnails of your favorites. The carousel works like Apple’s Cover Flow, and although it’s beautiful, I don’t like it. Finding the right book, if there are many, is not easy. For the convenience of walking, we came up with bookmarks, such as a newspaper shelf, books, music videos, etc., about them below.

Here I want to make a digression, all the beauty and convenience of the interface will be felt if you are an Amazon client, and for this you need to at least be in the States. Everything is very tied to the Amazone ecosystem, books, magazines, music and films, etc., all from them only. You can of course make a fake account, but the content will be available, only the one that is free, alas, we will not receive paid content. For myself, I decided, I’ll wait for him to have custom firmware on IceCreamSandwich and I will have a full Android tablet.

So, about bookmarks, in each of the bookmarks we get filtered content, which can also be sorted, but there are only 2 sortings: by adding status and by title, if you have a lot of books or magazines, it’s not so convenient to find the right one. In the bookmarks there is a switch of what is on the device and on the cloud. But all this must be bought. I repeat, having my real account, I can’t buy anything, offers to move to the states. For ease of reading - books work with a bang. But magazines, frankly it’s not convenient to read, everything is very small, when it is magnified it slows down and enlarged letters are not smoothed. It's nice to watch the video, I just have enough of such a screen for comfortable viewing, the speakers play loudly. Video from YouTube or a website with streaming flash video looks great.

Applications

As you already understood, it’s impossible to buy officially through the Amazon AppStore, but installing applications of the * .apk type is not difficult, even on the official firmware. All that is required of you is to allow the installation of unsigned applications. Now just download the application with the Kindle and install it. So I installed myself a pdf reader - the first one on the Internet, it works just super, djvu reader - super, angry birds - even found an optimized version for Kindle Fire. By the way, here the sister sits and shakes Comics, as it turned out they work for us.

Silk Browser

Amazon's silk browser requires special attention. It works on the same principle as opera mini, that is, all pages before being delivered to your screen are pre-processed on the great clouds from Amazon. In this regard, everything works smartly. But on sites in our zones this is not particularly noticeable, perhaps due to the fact that they are not cached by Amazon. But if you try to go to an American site like 6pm or the same Amazon, the speed is amazing. Today cyber mondey and I chose my shoes, I did it already on the Kindle Fire because 6pm never worked for me so fast. Silk, like an adult browser, can do everything: it shows flash banners (what would they be), html5, when double-clicked, aligns the text to the width of the screen - convenient for reading, etc. No complaints, but the font seemed to me not very beautiful, but this is a very small detail that does not affect the overall impression. I installed firefox fennec, but I have no desire to use it, Silk browser works much better.

Settings:

When starting each application, we have the opportunity to call the settings menu. And for us it doesn’t matter whether the application runs in full screen or not. To do this is easy enough, just tap in the upper right corner. Here we see the rotation lock, volume, brightness, Wi-Fi menu, sync button and more ... In the menu, we also have truncated settings from Android.

Conclusions:

I bought this device for a look, after testing, I understand that for now I will use it as a camp reader. I never liked e-ink devices and this Kindle, like a breath of fresh air. He is in no way a competitor to the Apple iPad, although the price is even lower by $ 300, and we have even more difference in price. When buying, you should understand that you spend $ 275 on the force, while still getting a very stripped-down, but decent tablet, which in the future, crossed fingers, install Android 4.0. Yes, there is no microphone, no camera, no gps, no 3g - but there is build quality, screen quality, and a very low price. All this makes it clear that there is no money on the iPad - Kindle Fire is our everything. Ask why the nook Tablet isn’t - it’s more expensive and when you order it, they still require a tax from us, the price is about $ 350, but here I’d better buy the first iPad.

PS Since in the review I just can’t reveal all its capabilities and features - ask questions, write additions, I will be glad.

A short video review of my friend: