The New Kindle Fire Updates Are Good, But Still Not Good Enough
Amazon's Kindle Fire from the start has been situated as the budget tablet. Its specs rarely are found to measure up to those of its competitors, but the price, the current edition offered at $229, is so appealing it has managed to leverage a spot in the market.
Now T'is the season for flashy flourishes and the Kindle Fire hasn't disappointed on that account. With a slightly redesigned operating system, based on Android, and a free Mayday feature - single button press access to a service rep - they're certainly going for the flash factor. The 7-inch Kindle Fire HDX hit the market on October 18 followed by the larger 8.9-inch screen version on November 7.
However, anyone hopeful of major upgrades of functions and capacity will find little to cheer about here. Not only is there little in the way of quality upgrades, but some are going to wind up feeling a bit cheated. While the system is based on Google's Android, it's kind of the poor man's Android, lacking Google's popular apps and services.
In contrast, the purchase of the new Kindle Fire leaves one immediately faced with having to download desired apps from Amazon. (This annoyance has included, by the way, activating the Flash Player , which does come with, but not activated, to the chagrin of some.) As if the quality of the user experience wasn't hampered enough, the quantity adds additional limitations: something in the vicinity of 85,000 apps are available for the Kindle tablet compared to nearly a million for Android. And it's not just the sheer numbers, as many extremely popular ones are missing: e.g., Google Maps, Gmail, and YouTube.
This brings us to another annoying feature of the Kindle Fire HDX, like its predecessor, its constantly trying to sell you goods from Amazon. If you hold your mouse over anything - app, book, video, whatever - your friendly Amazon salesman jumps up with a suggestion of something similar you should consider purchasing.
I find this immensely annoying and distracting. Obviously, it's a matter of personal taste. Some folks, I expect, find real value in this endless exposure to new product opportunities. For me, it just gets in the way of what I'm trying to do. Like commercial television, though, this is the monetizing strategy: you suffer through the ads to get the product at such a low price.
The good news is that the folks at Amazon have succeeded at reducing the rate of software bugs that caused so much trouble with previous models. It is much less glitchy. Also on the upside, it has an interesting design feature, which provides a "carousel" style view of apps, movies, books or whatever. These carousels provide a review of products or services that the Kindle user has recently accessed. There's a navigation bar at the bottom of the screen that provides access to the entire collection of content on the Kindle Fire.
Then there's that Mayday feature mentioned earlier. At the press of a button you get access to a live service rep, which appears in a corner of your screen. This rep can answer all your questions and actually take control of the tablet if that's a faster way to resolve difficulties than simply explaining how-to to the owner. This is a fairly cool thing and it is impressive that they've committed so heavily to customer service.
The thing is, though (and call me Joe-cynical if you like), but isn't the point of these tablets the creation of a distinctively user-friendly work environment? It's almost as though the Mayday name was less about the Fire owner calling out to Amazon than Amazon calling out Mayday to the market. It's like, okay, we admit, we couldn't do any better, but, hey, here's this cool workaround our inability to come up with a tablet most people could figure out on their own.
So, look, we have to conclude the same thing we have concluded on past versions. If you're sole interest is an unfailing loyalty to Amazon and its products, Kindle Fire may well be just what you need -- and there's certainly major improvements this time around. On the other hand, if your primary motivation is to save money on a tablet, you can do better .
Now T'is the season for flashy flourishes and the Kindle Fire hasn't disappointed on that account. With a slightly redesigned operating system, based on Android, and a free Mayday feature - single button press access to a service rep - they're certainly going for the flash factor. The 7-inch Kindle Fire HDX hit the market on October 18 followed by the larger 8.9-inch screen version on November 7.
However, anyone hopeful of major upgrades of functions and capacity will find little to cheer about here. Not only is there little in the way of quality upgrades, but some are going to wind up feeling a bit cheated. While the system is based on Google's Android, it's kind of the poor man's Android, lacking Google's popular apps and services.
In contrast, the purchase of the new Kindle Fire leaves one immediately faced with having to download desired apps from Amazon. (This annoyance has included, by the way, activating the Flash Player , which does come with, but not activated, to the chagrin of some.) As if the quality of the user experience wasn't hampered enough, the quantity adds additional limitations: something in the vicinity of 85,000 apps are available for the Kindle tablet compared to nearly a million for Android. And it's not just the sheer numbers, as many extremely popular ones are missing: e.g., Google Maps, Gmail, and YouTube.
This brings us to another annoying feature of the Kindle Fire HDX, like its predecessor, its constantly trying to sell you goods from Amazon. If you hold your mouse over anything - app, book, video, whatever - your friendly Amazon salesman jumps up with a suggestion of something similar you should consider purchasing.
I find this immensely annoying and distracting. Obviously, it's a matter of personal taste. Some folks, I expect, find real value in this endless exposure to new product opportunities. For me, it just gets in the way of what I'm trying to do. Like commercial television, though, this is the monetizing strategy: you suffer through the ads to get the product at such a low price.
The good news is that the folks at Amazon have succeeded at reducing the rate of software bugs that caused so much trouble with previous models. It is much less glitchy. Also on the upside, it has an interesting design feature, which provides a "carousel" style view of apps, movies, books or whatever. These carousels provide a review of products or services that the Kindle user has recently accessed. There's a navigation bar at the bottom of the screen that provides access to the entire collection of content on the Kindle Fire.
Then there's that Mayday feature mentioned earlier. At the press of a button you get access to a live service rep, which appears in a corner of your screen. This rep can answer all your questions and actually take control of the tablet if that's a faster way to resolve difficulties than simply explaining how-to to the owner. This is a fairly cool thing and it is impressive that they've committed so heavily to customer service.
The thing is, though (and call me Joe-cynical if you like), but isn't the point of these tablets the creation of a distinctively user-friendly work environment? It's almost as though the Mayday name was less about the Fire owner calling out to Amazon than Amazon calling out Mayday to the market. It's like, okay, we admit, we couldn't do any better, but, hey, here's this cool workaround our inability to come up with a tablet most people could figure out on their own.
So, look, we have to conclude the same thing we have concluded on past versions. If you're sole interest is an unfailing loyalty to Amazon and its products, Kindle Fire may well be just what you need -- and there's certainly major improvements this time around. On the other hand, if your primary motivation is to save money on a tablet, you can do better .
About the Author:
Mishu Hull writes on electronics at a range of blog sites. For more valuable information about the product discussed here, see Kindle Fire Updates .
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