Amazon Kindle Fire Review

Amazon Kindle Fire Review

The other day I finally got the Kindle Fire. This is the oldest and quite serious model of readers from Amazon. I think the release of color kindle is a very logical step for Amazon. It works under the control of android 2.3 gingerbread, but a pretty and nimble skin from Amazon is stretched over it.

Pre-order and delivery

I pre-ordered Kindle Fire the next day after its announcement, there were no problems with the order, Amazon accepted my card and promised to deliver it until 11/21/11, the money was not immediately written off, but warned that by the time of shipment my account should have the required amount. A pleasant surprise was that my Kindle was delivered to an address in the USA 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 a book.

We open the box.

Kindle Fire lies in a small box made entirely of paper. The box with the book opens effectively, by tearing off the perforated strip. The kit includes the Kindle itself and a charger (micro USB). When enabled, we are asked to register and upgrade.


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Pulling out the gadget that we see:

This is the BlackBerry PlayBook, but only from Amazon, its dimensions are almost the same 190 x 120 x 11.4 mm. Weight just 413g. The screen resolution is 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 in 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, extremely branded, it doesn’t scratch and that’s Gorilla Glass. There is a black border around the screen and this is a plus for the device, because how you don’t hold it and you don’t close the screen with your fingers. Above the end of the 2 speakers, which play quite decent and loud. The gadget has only 2 inputs (they are located in a heap below) - one for charging and transporting files through micro USB, the second is a 3.5mm headphone input and one physical button is device lock. Here I do not have enough volume rocker, but the volume control is easily caused by a slide from top to bottom on the screen. The Kindle Fire also has a light sensor, but for some reason, after updating the firmware, the auto-backlighting feature disappeared from the menu.

Under the hood

The Kindle Fire runs on a dual-core 1GHz TI OMAP processor, it has only 512 MB of RAM, which is somehow not enough, even for a 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 Kindle 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 turned on, the first thing that worried me was the quality of the display. Everything turned out to be great, it’s not at the level, for $ 199 it’s really good. The viewing angles are wide and suitable for watching videos in three. Full color rendering is excellent. In some English-speaking review I read that the backlight of the screen pierces the case, but there is nothing like that. And indeed, 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 for me was the question of the battery, whether it works as promised for 8 hours or, as always, barely 4. After the first charge set the backlight to 80% all the time was included Wi-Fi. I watched videos from youtube, watched a football match live, reread a bunch of articles and even started reading a book, I played Angry Birds for two hours. Total device stretched 7 hours. Now I do not torment him with continuous work, but it works as it should for a long time. So yes - everything is fair 8 hours 42 minutes Kindle should please you without interrupting to charge. In general, for physical properties and all. Let's go to the software.

Software

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

Here I want to make a retreat, all the beauty and convenience of the interface will be felt if you are an Amazon client, and for that you need at least to be in the States. Everything is very tied to the ecosystem from Amazone, books, magazines, music and movies, etc., all from them. 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 determined that I would wait for the custom firmware on IceCreamSandwich to be there and there would be a full Android tablet for me.

So, about the bookmarks, in each of the bookmarks we get filtered content, which can also be sorted, but 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 in 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 - the books work with a bang. But magazines, frankly, it is not convenient to read, everything is very small, with an increase it slows down and the enlarged letters are not smoothed. It is pleasant to watch the video; I just have enough of such a screen for comfortable viewing, the speakers are playing loudly. It looks great video from YouTube or site c streaming flash video. I'm listening to music using Google Music from the browser here, too, no complaints, the sound quality even when connected to powerful speakers is quite acceptable.

Applications

As you already understood, it is not possible to buy anything officially through the Amazon AppStore, but installing applications like * .apk is no problem even on official firmware. The only thing that is required of you is to allow the installation of unsigned applications. Now just download Kindle such applications and install. So I installed myself a pdf reader - the first available on the Internet, it works just great, the djvu reader is super, angry birds - I even found an optimized version for Kindle Fire. By the way, here my sister is sitting and shaking the Comics, as it turned out they work for us.

Silk Browser

The special attention is demanded by the "silk" browser from Amazon. It works on the same principle as opera mini, that is, all pages before they arrive on your screen are pre-processed on the great clouds from Amazon. In this regard, everything works smartly. But on the sites in our zones it is not very noticeable, possibly due to the fact that they are not proxy by Amazon. But if you try to go to the American site, for example, 6pm or the same Amazon speed is amazing. Today, cyber mondey and I chose my shoes, did it already on the Kindle Fire because I never worked so quickly at 6pm. Silk as an adult browser can do everything: shows flash banners (what would they), html5, with a double click, aligns the text to the width of the screen - convenient for reading and so on. No complaints, only 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 don’t have the slightest desire to use it, the Silk browser works much better.

Settings:

When you start each application, we have the opportunity to bring up the settings menu. And for us it does not matter whether the application is running full screen or not. It's easy enough to do this, 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 additionally have trimmed settings from Android.

Findings:

I bought this device for a look, after testing, I understand that for the time being I will use it as a hiking reader. I have never liked the devices on e-ink and this Kindle as a breath of fresh air. It is by no means a competitor to the Apple iPad, even though the price is lower by $ 300, and we also have a difference in price. When buying, you should understand that you are spending on strength $ 275 while still getting a very curtailed, but worthy, taglet that your fingers crossed on in the future, we’ll install Android 4.0. Yes, there is no microphone, no camera, no gps, no 3g - but there is a build quality, a screen quality, and a very low price. All this allows you to understand, there is no money on the iPad - Kindle Fire is our everything. Ask why not the nook Tablet - it is more expensive and when ordering it, they still require a tax, the price is about $ 350, and here I'd rather buy the first iPad.

PS Since the review I can not reveal all its features and features - ask questions, write additions, I will be glad.

A small video review of my friend: