4 ms·

Still terrible. Just bought two. Both are slow and absolutely riddled with software bugs. If I didn't get them on a deal day for £29 they'd be going back. Ive

Still terrible. Just bought two. Both are slow and absolutely riddled with software bugs. If I didn't get them on a deal day for £29 they'd be going back. Ive never seen so many bugs. Both pads suffer from things like kids profiles having to redownload (or do something) to every app everytime you open it. App crashes and slow launches every time it gets used (around 30 second launch times on both pads) Downloads simply do not get save to SD card despite clear settings saying otherwise. Accelerometer freezes. There's some kind of race condition in the app store so even though I've disabled it with parental controls sometimes you can get it to download an app without password. One nice bug is that if you set up a kid profile it wont show ads on the lock screen. A fun bug is that if you delete the kids profile, it'll not actually remove the profile data, it just stays on disc taking up space. You have to reset the device to factory settings, but if you dont and you just leave the kids profile deleted it still thinks ones on there and doesn't show ads. That's not all the stuff I've run into (initial setup had all sorts of other issues) but those are just of the top of my head.

olfactory 9y ago
The one I got does not have a slot for an external SD card, so I'm not sure if we are using the same version. The one I bought (pre holiday sale for $25) is adequately fast. Launch times are a bit slow, but it was $25 and once an app, book, or web page is launched/loaded the scrolling and interactions work fine. The dropbox app, web browser, and chess apps I use all work nicely. I also use it for reading PDFs (articles, books) and books from the kindle store. I've noticed the kid profiles to be a bit buggy, but iOS and Android don't have comparable functionality, so I applaud Amazon for shipping what they have and continuing to iterate on it. Even with the bugs the experience of handing it to a kid is far better than Android or iOS. Mine installed several software updates in the first week after purchase, so it appears that there is active development going on. It's incredibly liberating when the device can be sold for such an aggressive price. I don't mind if a kid drops it on the floor, I carry it around in my pocket and don't worry about sitting on it, and when there is a faster hardware version I'll likely spring for a new one.
jvagner 9y ago
My Amazon Fire tests were: charge up, leave unplugged, see how much power it had in the morning. For me, it was always drained. Power management in those devices is particularly weak.
- olfactory 9y ago
  Mine lasts about a week, which is incidentally far better than the Nexus 7 when set to default settings.

olfactory 9y ago

The one I got does not have a slot for an external SD card, so I'm not sure if we are using the same version. The one I bought (pre holiday sale for $25) is adequately fast. Launch times are a bit slow, but it was $25 and once an app, book, or web page is launched/loaded the scrolling and interactions work fine. The dropbox app, web browser, and chess apps I use all work nicely. I also use it for reading PDFs (articles, books) and books from the kindle store. I've noticed the kid profiles to be a bit buggy, but iOS and Android don't have comparable functionality, so I applaud Amazon for shipping what they have and continuing to iterate on it. Even with the bugs the experience of handing it to a kid is far better than Android or iOS. Mine installed several software updates in the first week after purchase, so it appears that there is active development going on. It's incredibly liberating when the device can be sold for such an aggressive price. I don't mind if a kid drops it on the floor, I carry it around in my pocket and don't worry about sitting on it, and when there is a faster hardware version I'll likely spring for a new one.

jvagner 9y ago

My Amazon Fire tests were: charge up, leave unplugged, see how much power it had in the morning. For me, it was always drained. Power management in those devices is particularly weak.

olfactory 9y ago
Mine lasts about a week, which is incidentally far better than the Nexus 7 when set to default settings.