Amazon Releases New Fire HD 10 (2017) Tablet

[Purple Lady]

Originally Posted by Andy_D

What is it about the Fire OS that's so terrible?

I never swipe left or right, so I never see or use any of the screens designed to keep you in the Amazon ecosystem. The only screen I ever see is the home screen and that one resembles the simple desktop of desktop OSes with icons for apps I installed arranged in the order that I want them. I group some of them in folders. I put all the Android apps in a folder that I never use. I use a file manager (Es File Explorer) to open videos and books etc. It's not perfect, but, imo, it's simple and servicable.

So my question is not rhetorical. Why is stock Android so much better?

P.S. I recently tested a development reported a couple of months ago in XDA developers that shows how Amazon apps -- all the crapware -- can be deleted without rooting via a simple ADB command. It works. So it shouldn't be necessary to even have a never-use folder on the desktop or have the system be slowed down by never used apps running in the background.

I hate the home screen. I can't use widgets, and I can't arrange the icons the way I want to. I prefer to have space between some of them, I don't like being restricted to a simple grid. There's also no dock, and only one home screen. There's also no app drawer to get to rarely used apps that I don't want crowding up my screen The very first icon my home screen is for Nova Launcher so I can get out of that screen quickly when I foolishly hit the home button.

Edit: you also can't sort the icons alphabetically. You have to do it manually.

[barryem]

Originally Posted by Andy_D

What is it about the Fire OS that's so terrible?

I never swipe left or right, so I never see or use any of the screens designed to keep you in the Amazon ecosystem. The only screen I ever see is the home screen and that one resembles the simple desktop of desktop OSes with icons for apps I installed arranged in the order that I want them. I group some of them in folders. I put all the Android apps in a folder that I never use. I use a file manager (Es File Explorer) to open videos and books etc. It's not perfect, but, imo, it's simple and servicable.

So my question is not rhetorical. Why is stock Android so much better?=

Android tends to be graceful. FireOS tends to be clumsy. Either one will do most of the things the other will do, at least if you know how to make it do it. Android does it easier, more intuitively and more gracefully.

Amazon's philosophy in all their products is to keep things simple for the average person and that's not a bad philosophy, although it's not the preferred way of the geeks among us. The problem is that Amazon's designers, and this is true nearly across their product lines, tend to make things more difficult and less intuitive while trying to simplify. I think they're just not very good designers.

So you know where I'm coming from, I'm a long time very happy Amazon customer. I buy from them when I can and from others if I have to. They've made my life easier. So this isn't prejudice against Amazon. I'm pretty much an Amazon booster. I'm not a booster of Amazon's designers.

I'm a retired programmer, long retired and out of date, I'm afraid, and interface design was never my specialty. But I have designed a LOT of interfaces and I do know something about it. I even took a few courses in it. As I said it was never my specialty and I don't consider myself an expert on the subject but I'm also not chopped liver.

A simple example from my 7" Fire: my home screen has enough lines of icons even after putting all the icons I can into folders that there are 2 pages of icons. When I want to see the bottom page I can't simply scroll like you can on even the ungodly Ipad, I have to scroll all the way and then hold it a second or the page will bounce back. When I scrolled I made my intentions perfectly clear but the Fire doesn't believe me till I hold it there. On other tablets I give a little push and wallah! It scrolls the rest of the way for me as though it has inertia.

I picked this as an example because it's so totally obvious after just a few minutes using the tablet and because it's such a very poor design choice. And there are many many others. FireOS is really a pain to use.

That said, I have the 7" Fire and I use it and I'm glad I have it. It's the tablet that I keep going around the clock so it's always handy when I want it, ready to go, ready to frustrate at a moment's notice. I got it when they put them on sale for $30 and it was worth every penny of that.

Barry

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by Blossom

Does anyone know the PPI yet?

Sent from my XT1528

See here (under resolution) to see how it compares with all of the Fire Tabs released to date.

[kevinp]

Originally Posted by leebase

I'm still trying to determine how different the "new" HD8 is. It has Alexa, but that's software. I'm THINKING I'm getting better battery life and it appear to be a tad faster. But I couldn't swear by either. I still can't just leave it alone for a few days or a week or more and expect there to be any battery life. That's one of the nice things about an iPad. They really don't lose much if anything when you aren't using them.

I bought my HD8 to replace my old Nook HD+. I've had it about 8 months I think. Yesterday I brushed the dust off my Nook and decided I'd charge it up, only to find out the battery was still at 86%!

Originally Posted by leebase

One thing that is still frustrating is that -- from time to time -- the Kindle Fire's bog down. For no good reason I can discover, they just get REALLY slow. And then some time later they are ok again. Happened with my 7, first HD8 and the new HD8.

Have you tried closing the apps you're not using anymore to free up memory?

Originally Posted by leebase

I don't see the night and day improvement between the old and new HD8. I see improvement, but if money is an issue...keep your old HD8 and wait for a more significant upgrade. For me, the price falls into discretionary spending and I just hand my old HD8 to a family member.

How are the rest of you finding the new HD8 compared to the old one?

If you can afford an iPad, then a new Fire is just chump change for you!
I can't compare the new HD8 to the old one since I this is my first Fire tablet, but it is certainly MUCH faster than my old Nook. I mainly use it for reading books with the stock Kindle app and reading magazines with Zinio. I'd rather have the bigger 10" screen, but can't justify spending the money when my current tablet isn't even a year old.

[stumped]

Originally Posted by Dent-Fixer

Uggh. I can't get past Fire OS. If you could somehow flash it with stock Android, I would be all over this. ...

you probably can - my son in law did, with a fire HD 8

and I add google play store and apps to my fire tablets - very easy - no root required. so I can use chrome in place of silk , & an ebay app that is not 3 years old....

I just with they would fix the issue of : you can have Alexa enabled, OR you can have parental controls on to block accidental i clock payments , BUT you can't have both. reading the blurb for this new tablet say this is still how it is

[Josieb1]

Originally Posted by kevinp

I can't compare the new HD8 to the old one since I this is my first Fire tablet, but it is certainly MUCH faster than my old Nook. I mainly use it for reading books with the stock Kindle app and reading magazines with Zinio. I'd rather have the bigger 10" screen, but can't justify spending the money when my current tablet isn't even a year old.

I also have the 2016 HD8, the 32GB. I plan to sell mine (hopefully) to part offset the cost of the new HD10. I want the bigger screen, higher resolution, better processor and 64GB internal storage. I have hundreds of personal documents in my Amazon Cloud and they must install to the internal storage so the extra space would be handy. I probably won't use it as with my 8 I find the more that's on it the slower it gets but for the extra £30 it's worth doubling the storage.

I might wait until John Lewis gets it as then I'll have a two year warranty instead of he one Amazon provides. I use to pay for extended warrantys but I'm beginning to think it's just extra cost when I can get a bit extra free.

[stumped]

i am waiting for the UK black friday - they are £150 to pre - order here ( the usual uk rip off when compared to USA prices ) but I bet there will be a black friday sale price. of £20 - £30 off .
I think we will also see the new Echo look over here , before too long, as they keep discounting the original cylindrical Echo ( £99 today )

[Josieb1]

Originally Posted by stumped

i am waiting for the UK black friday - they are £150 to pre - order here ( the usual uk rip off when compared to USA prices ) but I bet there will be a black friday sale price. of £20 - £30 off .
I think we will also see the new Echo look over here , before too long, as they keep discounting the original cylindrical Echo ( £99 today )

I wonder if they will discount it on Black Friday, it is tempting to wait but I'm not sure.

[stumped]

Originally Posted by Josieb1

I wonder if they will discount it on Black Friday, it is tempting to wait but I'm not sure.

It is not much of a wait, there is no stock yet anyway

[Josieb1]

I want to get mine from John Lewis for the extra years warranty so I might hang on and see if Amazon do discount it and JL price match. I've just sold my HD8 for £60 to a friend so that will help with the cost as I want the 64GB.

[Andy_D]

Originally Posted by Josieb1

I wonder if they will discount it on Black Friday, it is tempting to wait but I'm not sure.

If the recent past is a guide, they will.

Amazon's Black Friday sales have been in the range of one third off. I got the $50 Fire 7 for $33 in '15. I got last year's $90 8HD for $60. If this holds for '17, a 10" tablet with remarkably improved specs over the 2016 HD8, the new 10" could be $99. I'm excited! I've been pricing low end 10" tablets, and their prices have been a big leap up from low end 8" models.

I am not a Black Friday shopper taking my life in my hands or waiting in lines, but you can easily get Amazon's sales, even at brick and mortar stores. I got 2 Fire 7s at Staples and the Fire HD8 at Best Buy with both stores matching Amazon's prices over several days with plenty of stock. Amazon had a somewhat smaller sale in the days before Christmas for the same tablets.

With that in mind, I don't know why anyone would be in a rush to pre-order. Black Friday will be the perfect amount of time to have passed in order to read actual reviews, see video reviews on YouTube, and read of any problems in the inevitable discussion here on MR. And save quite a bit of money.

[Andy_D]

Originally Posted by Josieb1

I have hundreds of personal documents in my Amazon Cloud and they must install to the internal storage so the extra space would be handy.

With a file manager (like ES File Explorer) and an SD card, you can easily move anything from the internal storage to the SD card and then open any vid, doc, etc. by tapping it in the file manager. That's what I do with 100+ gigs of content on the SD card.

Originally Posted by Josieb1

I probably won't use it [internal storage] as with my 8 I find the more that's on it the slower it gets but for the extra £30 it's worth doubling the storage.

I have gotten warnings that I'm within 1GB of using up all the internal storage, but even then I experience no slowdown. It must be that, like on regular computers, it's only the RAM, not the storage, that affects performance.

Right now I see in the file manager that almost 11GB of the available 12GB of internal memory are being used (the rest of the 16GB is used by the OS). But in settings > apps and games > manage all applications, the "Device Memory" bar graph in the "Running" tab shows 716MB of RAM free (about 2/3rds of the total). And eveything is running as fast as it ever did.

[Blossom]

Originally Posted by Andy_D

With a file manager (like ES File Explorer) and an SD card, you can easily move anything from the internal storage to the SD card and then open any vid, doc, etc. by tapping it in the file manager. That's what I do with 100+ gigs of content on the SD card.

ES File Explorer is full of malware. I wouldn't put any versions after 4.0.2.3 on any device.

Sent from my Nexus 7

[Blossom]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

See here (under resolution) to see how it compares with all of the Fire Tabs released to date.

Thanks Monkey. Maybe Santa will bring me one.

Sent from my Nexus 7

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by Blossom

ES File Explorer is full of malware. I wouldn't put any versions after 4.0.2.3 on any device.

Sent from my Nexus 7

Yeah, when it went wrong, it went wrong in a big hurry.