Re: Amazon’s new Android tablet - Kindle Fire
I was extremely sleepy last night so I checked it out for about 30 mins only.
Setup was dead simple. In fact because I ordered it using my Amazon account, Fire was already setup for my account. Tablet feels good and sturdy when you hold it, but because of very thin bazel, its hard to grab it without covering a part of screen. Screen was good in terms of brightness and touch capabilties, but you can feel that screen size is not too good and you feel that you are holding a giant phone rather than a smaller tablet in your hands.
few things that I did not like too much.
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Tiered menu. It gave me a feeling of limitation and inconvenience as main screen is grouped under 7 or so categories and in order to access your app or go to web, you have to go to that category first. So to go to angry birds, you first have to go to apps and then angry birds (very different from ipad where your favorite app could be on the first screen if you want to).
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Slow browser: It takes a noticeable amount of time for browser to load a new page. Sometimes I had to refresh as it seemed that it was not loading at all.
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Volume button: There is no dedicated volume button on the hardware. You have to hit the setting icon and then lower or raise the volume through sliding button on the screen.
4: Awkward dimensions: As I said earlier, it feels like a giant phone and you dont know whether to hold in one hand like an iphone or in two hands like an ipad. Best bet is to hold like a phone in portrait mode and like a tablet in landscape mode.
Things that I Like
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Price: only $199.00, nuff said.
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Flash support: Kids love the fact that they can play PBS and Nick Jr videos.
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Rubberized back: Feels good and you dont fear that you will scratch the back when you put it down.
In short, just like Ipad can only be your secondary computing device and cannot replace a dedicated laptop, Kindle can be your secondary tablet and cannot replace a full fledged tablet like Ipad. It is very hard for an Ipad user to give kindle fire a stand alone look without comparing everything with an Ipad (I know its not fair to Kindle but that is how it is for me). Having said that, because its only S200.00, its a great gadget to have whether you own another tablet or not.
. It’s cute though. And you can play flash-flash.