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I bought a Fire tablet and I swore "never again" after that experience. I sold it on Craig's list and bought a Nexus 7. Couldn't be happier. The fact that Am

by e40 12y ago

I bought a Fire tablet and I swore "never again" after that experience. I sold it on Craig's list and bought a Nexus 7. Couldn't be happier. The fact that Amazon has a separate store really ticked me off. Lots of apps I was used to on my phone couldn't be used on the Fire. And, the fact that the Fire was based on Android 2.x and really never got better, well, that was really annoying, too. So, when their phone was announced, even before I knew one thing about it, I was completely uninterested.

r00fus 12y ago
I'm not exactly a fan of the Fire tablets, but isn't the latest Fire OS based on AOSP 4.0?
- benologist 12y ago
  There's a more modern Android backing it but you still can't install the Play store so you're restricted to Amazon's much smaller appstore.
- hkmurakami 12y ago
  Given their history, I think many of us would wager that the OS will be out of date within 1-2 years, even if they are up to date as of launch.
- bellerocky 12y ago
  I own a Fire HDX 7" and it is a pretty amazing tablet. The many apps that integrate with Google Play Service for no good reason, like a password manager like 1Password, is pretty depressing though. I can't get the latest version of it. I would probably buy an Android tablet if I didn't have so many videos on Amazon's video store. I wish they would just make their videos available on Android. Amazon is supposed to be platform independent but they haven't made any videos available on Android and it fucking sucks. They're the only company that makes their content available across devices, and now they're not even doing that anymore. Why can't videos be portable. It sucks. It really sucks, and they're not doing this in the best interest of their customers.
  - estel 12y ago
    > They're the only company that makes their content available across devices Most of Google Play's content is available cross-device? There's definitely a native iOS application for Movies/TV.
    - bellerocky 12y ago
      There isn't one for Android without Google Play.
  - jerf 12y ago
    "The many apps that integrate with Google Play Service for no good reason, like a password manager like 1Password, is pretty depressing though." AIUI, "Google Play Services" are basically "Android updates for the Android phones that we can't upgrade because carriers won't do it". Everything ends up integrated into it because if you want one up-to-date service Android provides, you'll end up getting it through that. Otherwise the app developer is stuck on just the lowest-common-denominator. I learned this because I have a phone running 2.2 that if I let it upgrade to Google Play Services, and then upgrade all the other stock apps on the phone that want to use it (YouTube, Gmail), leaves me without about 10MB of space on the device left over. So I shut off the upgrades. I'm not in a hurry to upgrade because it's just not what I want to do with the money.
    - king_jester 12y ago
      > I learned this because I have a phone running 2.2 that if I let it upgrade to Google Play Services, and then upgrade all the other stock apps on the phone that want to use it (YouTube, Gmail), leaves me without about 10MB of space on the device left over. So I shut off the upgrades. I'm not in a hurry to upgrade because it's just not what I want to do with the money. I've been in a similar boat. The way storage partitions were handled on 2.x era devices makes the larger sizes of apps and Google Play Services really noticeable.
  - blisterpeanuts 12y ago
    Yes, it's annoying (if understandable) that Amazon has not made Prime streaming video available for stock Android but only for Fire devices--and for iOS tablets. I watch Prime video all the time on my iPad. Stupid, but what can you do (other than avoid Fire devices on general principle).
pwnna 12y ago
Unrelated, but it's kinda sad to see that we are all locked into Google Play Services.
- miah_ 12y ago
  Not technically, there is the FOSS Android App Store provided by F-Droid. https://f-droid.org/ https://f-droid.org/
  - pwnna 12y ago
    I have that installed and it's doesn't have a lot of stuff that I use daily... Like facebook messenger (shamed to admit..) and such. I try my best to use as much OSS on my phone as possible (I compile my own OS from CM), but it's really hard to get everything
- king_jester 12y ago
  It's not Google Play Services so much as most app developers won't even bother with doing the app submission process for Amazon, which to date is a PITA (clunky web interface, smaller user base, waiting for someone to review your app which may get rejected when you can just go the easy route with Google Play).
  - berdario 12y ago
    Imho the "Google Services as blocker" is way worse than it's normally recognized: If you want to use a faux-taxi or similar service, Lyft, Sidecar, Flywheel and Uber all need the Google Play Services to work. The sad thing, is that Sidecar is available on the Amazon store, but since there's no way to explicitly state the dependency of an application on Google's libraries, it will just crash at installation/runtime with a segfault (due to not being able to load a .so) Only after going back to a device with the Google services I realized that you can actually use Uber from your mobile browser (it's at m.uber.com, but if you visit uber.com from your mobile there're no prominent links that point to the former)
    - 12y ago
dpcan 12y ago
I think that for many (most?) Fire tablet users, not having Google Play is a minor issue at best. I have many people in my family that love their Fire tablets to death. They aren't even impressed by the iPad. It just does everything they need with no Play Store required. Read books, Facebook, web, games, movies (with Prime/Netflix) etc.

by e40 12y ago

r00fus 12y ago

I'm not exactly a fan of the Fire tablets, but isn't the latest Fire OS based on AOSP 4.0?

benologist 12y ago
There's a more modern Android backing it but you still can't install the Play store so you're restricted to Amazon's much smaller appstore.
hkmurakami 12y ago
Given their history, I think many of us would wager that the OS will be out of date within 1-2 years, even if they are up to date as of launch.
bellerocky 12y ago
I own a Fire HDX 7" and it is a pretty amazing tablet. The many apps that integrate with Google Play Service for no good reason, like a password manager like 1Password, is pretty depressing though. I can't get the latest version of it. I would probably buy an Android tablet if I didn't have so many videos on Amazon's video store. I wish they would just make their videos available on Android. Amazon is supposed to be platform independent but they haven't made any videos available on Android and it fucking sucks. They're the only company that makes their content available across devices, and now they're not even doing that anymore. Why can't videos be portable. It sucks. It really sucks, and they're not doing this in the best interest of their customers.
- estel 12y ago
  > They're the only company that makes their content available across devices Most of Google Play's content is available cross-device? There's definitely a native iOS application for Movies/TV.
  - bellerocky 12y ago
    There isn't one for Android without Google Play.
- jerf 12y ago
  "The many apps that integrate with Google Play Service for no good reason, like a password manager like 1Password, is pretty depressing though." AIUI, "Google Play Services" are basically "Android updates for the Android phones that we can't upgrade because carriers won't do it". Everything ends up integrated into it because if you want one up-to-date service Android provides, you'll end up getting it through that. Otherwise the app developer is stuck on just the lowest-common-denominator. I learned this because I have a phone running 2.2 that if I let it upgrade to Google Play Services, and then upgrade all the other stock apps on the phone that want to use it (YouTube, Gmail), leaves me without about 10MB of space on the device left over. So I shut off the upgrades. I'm not in a hurry to upgrade because it's just not what I want to do with the money.
  - king_jester 12y ago
    > I learned this because I have a phone running 2.2 that if I let it upgrade to Google Play Services, and then upgrade all the other stock apps on the phone that want to use it (YouTube, Gmail), leaves me without about 10MB of space on the device left over. So I shut off the upgrades. I'm not in a hurry to upgrade because it's just not what I want to do with the money. I've been in a similar boat. The way storage partitions were handled on 2.x era devices makes the larger sizes of apps and Google Play Services really noticeable.
- blisterpeanuts 12y ago
  Yes, it's annoying (if understandable) that Amazon has not made Prime streaming video available for stock Android but only for Fire devices--and for iOS tablets. I watch Prime video all the time on my iPad. Stupid, but what can you do (other than avoid Fire devices on general principle).

pwnna 12y ago

Unrelated, but it's kinda sad to see that we are all locked into Google Play Services.

miah_ 12y ago
Not technically, there is the FOSS Android App Store provided by F-Droid. https://f-droid.org/ https://f-droid.org/
- pwnna 12y ago
  I have that installed and it's doesn't have a lot of stuff that I use daily... Like facebook messenger (shamed to admit..) and such. I try my best to use as much OSS on my phone as possible (I compile my own OS from CM), but it's really hard to get everything
king_jester 12y ago
It's not Google Play Services so much as most app developers won't even bother with doing the app submission process for Amazon, which to date is a PITA (clunky web interface, smaller user base, waiting for someone to review your app which may get rejected when you can just go the easy route with Google Play).
- berdario 12y ago
  Imho the "Google Services as blocker" is way worse than it's normally recognized: If you want to use a faux-taxi or similar service, Lyft, Sidecar, Flywheel and Uber all need the Google Play Services to work. The sad thing, is that Sidecar is available on the Amazon store, but since there's no way to explicitly state the dependency of an application on Google's libraries, it will just crash at installation/runtime with a segfault (due to not being able to load a .so) Only after going back to a device with the Google services I realized that you can actually use Uber from your mobile browser (it's at m.uber.com, but if you visit uber.com from your mobile there're no prominent links that point to the former)
  - 12y ago

dpcan 12y ago

I think that for many (most?) Fire tablet users, not having Google Play is a minor issue at best. I have many people in my family that love their Fire tablets to death. They aren't even impressed by the iPad. It just does everything they need with no Play Store required. Read books, Facebook, web, games, movies (with Prime/Netflix) etc.