Amazon's New $50 Fire Tablet

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00TSUGXKE/

by bsilvereagle • 11 years ago

35 71 11 years ago

atomi• 11 years ago

My Nexus 7 from 3 years ago has better specs and cost only slightly more. Who buys this junk?

EA• 11 years ago

Parents. It comes with a two-year "no questions asked" warranty and free access to tons of media curated by an independent third party.

Osiris• 11 years ago

Actually, the "no questions asked" warranty is only on the "Kids edition" which is $100. The Kids edition is the $50 tablet + a case + "FreeTime", and the 2 year replacement warranty.

noja2• 11 years ago

Your Nexus 7 did not cost 50 bucks three years ago.

(Also it's hardly junk because you don't like the price)

fweespeech2• 11 years ago

People who are not technically literate and bought into the Amazon eco system.

Also Hearthstone players where, with the right combination of events, you can buy in-game currency at a discount that likely exceeds the $50 [if you buy $500 worth of in game currency, which is not unusual in a TCG, you only need a 10% discount to effectively get a "free" tablet]

http://hearthstoneplayers.com/today-only-special-bonus-on-am... [40% discount, spend $200 and end up with a free tablet]

scrollaway• 11 years ago

Re Hearthstone: This is something that applies to any user of the Amazon store, which is open to regular android users. I doubt Amazon's target demographic for this tablet is "Hearthstone players"... at least, not for that reason.

leesalminen2• 11 years ago

My customers use cheap Fire tablets as e-signature collection devices.

noja2• 11 years ago

Which software do they use to collect the signatures? Is it in the app store? With the Amazon Android?

schmichael• 11 years ago

The Nexus 7 was 3 times as much. Maybe $100 isn't much to you, but it is to a lot of people.

IkmoIkmo• 11 years ago

Your Nexus 7 cost (more than) 4x as much when it was introduced, no comparison.

Further, there's probably a market for people who want simple devices laying around at their bedside, couch or table that's bigger than their phone, more functional than an e-reader but not as clunky as a laptop (still very much a form factor for desks) for doing light digital stuff like reading the news, e-reader, checking email, browsing the web, watching video etc. None of this really requires high-end specs. This is exactly what I bought the Nexus 7 for (intro'd at $200 for the 7 and $230 for the 7 2nd gen), for my girlfriend, and she hasn't run a single app yet in the last 2 years that'd have required more specs than this tablet. The only thing she might miss is the N7's beautiful screen compared to the 170 PPI Fire tablet, but after buying a MBA a few weeks ago she still hasn't noticed the 128 PPI yet despite me pointing it out to here a few times and she's super happy so even here I think the Fire tablet would've more than sufficed for her use.

Granted with 5 inch phones becoming the norm the 7 inch form factor is being squeezed a bit, but at $50 it's still a very interesting little consumption device to have laying around.

It's not for me but I've got several family members for whom it's pretty good value.

borkabrak2• 11 years ago

Maybe I'm not sufficiently hardware-savvy, but what's the downside here?

I am more or less in the market for a modest tablet, but I'm indifferent to whether it comes from Amazon. Can someone recommend a better deal?

ninjakeyboard• 11 years ago

Likely it's heavily subsidized vs market value in order to increase initial buy with the hope you will purchase from the marketplace.

If you want an ereader get a paperwhite imo. But if you actually want a screen tablet this may not be a bad bet. There are lots of good cheap android devices these days too. Fire does run android but in my dev shop we treat fire with special care due to both the heavy modification and different store.

It's not a pure android device so you're going to be very much locked in to the amazon market.

eclipxe2• 11 years ago

The new FireOS seems to be much closer to stock Android

tlianza• 11 years ago

Biggest downside is the FireOS, Amazon store instead of Google Play, etc.

If you want to do basic web surfing stuff, this is a phenomenal deal. I doubt you'll find a better one.

If you want to experience all that modern Android tablets are capable of, these tablets will not provide that. In particular anything related to Google services (mail/apps) and Android apps that are delivered through the Google Play store but not delivered though the Amazon store. There are a lot of mainstream apps that don't bother to push their apps to Amazon's store.

300zxkyle• 11 years ago

Excuse my ignorance, what prevents a savvy user from flashing it with a different OS?

bsilvereagle3• 11 years ago

From what I could tell, (at least) the $50 Fire is currently ad supported, and by default Amazon Underground is ad supported as well.

borkabrak2• 11 years ago

Ouch. This one landed. If this is true, then I think it would turn me off the deal. Unless I wanted to try what someone else mentioned and flash it with CyanogenMod or something. Never done that before, but this might be a good way to start..

edit: It looks like they've got the same situation vis-a-vis ads as all Kindles - yes they have ads, there is some attempt to make them unobtrusive, and they only have ads in the US.

http://www.zdnet.com/article/all-kindle-fire-hd-models-ad-su...

So that explains that. Now to find out how hard flashing a new OS would be. :)

ktsmith2• 11 years ago

You can pay an additional $15 and get the version that's not ad supported. When you click configure and add to cart you are presented with that as the first option.

isaacagh• 11 years ago

Does anyone knows if this comes with a Snapdragon CPU?

rasz_pl• 11 years ago

most likely mediatek or maybe even allwinner

Splines4• 11 years ago

mediatek: http://bgr.com/2015/09/16/amazon-tablet-specs-50-dollars/

protomyth3• 11 years ago

Mono speaker? I guess they expect everyone to use headphones.

ceejayoz• 11 years ago

No, they expect anyone who cares to pay more than $50.

protomyth3• 11 years ago

If your saying its "built for entertainment", a mono speaker doesn't go with that.

thecrumb• 11 years ago

Wonder if you could root this and install Cyanogen or something?

dharma1• 11 years ago

i guess if it's a standard chipset and unlocked bootloader, give it a couple of months. You can get a decent tablet for not very much more though

ausjke• 11 years ago

looks great, if it supports touch-pen it will be perfect for school kids.

Turing_Machine3• 11 years ago

Indeed. You'd feel a lot better about turning a little kid loose with a $50 Fire tablet than a $500 iPad.

zkhalique• 11 years ago

I like how it puts ads on the lock screen to offset costs

toxican• 11 years ago

Interesting. Very tempting as-is, but we'll have to see where we're at with Cyanogen Mod support in a few months before I'll buy one. Though I realize I'm not the target demographic for this by any means.

webwanderings2• 11 years ago

Never going to buy a 7" no matter how cheap it gets. The screen resolution is not worth it.

webwanderings2• 11 years ago

Don't just down-vote dammit, give me an argument if you care so much to click.

The people are being hoodwinked into buying these so-called "tablets" of smaller sizes, where as, none of these should be called tablets, rather, they are just a bigger size phones with no traditional calling features. Amazon or no Amazon, you would be wasting your time, energy and $$ if you buy a tablet with anything less than 1024x768 resolution. Just don't.

byron_fast2• 11 years ago

It would be more interesting if Amazon put Flash on it instead of making it a spam delivery device. Swim upstream.

Less work than Amazon Underground, more free games.

sn0v• 11 years ago

You're kidding, right?

Flash is dying tech, and not worth the battery life tradeoff (which this device doesn't have much of to begin with)

Splines4• 11 years ago

AFAIK Adobe stopped supporting flash on Android some time ago. It would be a considerable engineering effort to get it working again. Plus, (again, AFAIK) flash it not common among touch devices and I would be surprised if all games would work easily without a mouse.

That aside, what if Amazon got it working? What then? Free content doesn't help Amazon any.

The Fire tablets are not just about games/apps - it's about tying the user into the rest of Amazon's media ecosystem. Video, books and shopping. It's Amazon's equivalent of free parking.

byron_fast2• 11 years ago

If free content doesn't help, why spend time on Amazon Underground? My point is: do something different. A low-rent imitation of everything else has so far cost them a fortune. The original Fire had a Flash plugin. I'm sure they could get it working for the cost of about 12 minutes of Prime losses.

dacox• 11 years ago

Amazon! Won't ship to lonely old Canada.

quinndupont• 11 years ago

Can anyone else confirm? Seems to have added to my basket (on Amazon.com, but with Canadian account). Now, with a $.70CAD->USD conversion...

Ethan_Mick• 11 years ago

What does this mean for Amazon's Fire HD 6" Tablet[0]? Looking it now, the new Fire tablet is about the same in every way (screen resolution lacking), but at $50 more, I'm not sure the better screen resolution will win many people over.

The new Fire Tablet even has features the 6" one is missing! Mayday and an SD card slot.

[0] http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00KC6I06S/

deng• 11 years ago

Before people buy stuff like this and expect to be able to install Cyanogen in a few months:

http://forum.xda-developers.com/fire-hd/general/psa-dont-buy...

Zelphyr2• 11 years ago

Everything Amazon does with the Fire product line I find to be terrible. The Kindle Paperwhite is a delight to use but the Fire is beyond frustrating and, often as not, feels like a device designed for the sole purpose of parting me with my money on Amazon other products.

My 7 year old got a Kids Kindle Fire. I have 20+ years software engineering experience yet I have more trouble trying to do the most basic things with that device. Its infuriating.

We got the Fire TV Stick figuring it would be a good alternative to the Roku. Its not. Most of the time it couldn't keep a connection to wifi.

I don't know what Amazon is thinking but, in my opinion, their reputation is suffering badly because of their handling of the Fire product line. I know personally I will never buy another Fire product.

calm_245• 11 years ago

The Fire TV stick is the best $ I've spent on a TV device. I love it - fast, responsive, does not drop connections, and has all the apps I want.

I've used Boxee, Google TV, Roku, Chromecast, and (XMBC on Raspberry Pi) and none of those compare to the FireTV stick. It blows them out of the water.

Boxee was my favorite until the team building it deserted it

JohnTHaller• 11 years ago

One nice thing about the Roku is that it searches across multiple apps for content. The Amazon TV devices put Amazon content front and center, making you think you have to buy a video when you already have access to it via Netflix without having to pay more.

ktsmith2• 11 years ago

I've got a kids kindle fire with their free time service for my 6 year old and couldn't agree more. The software and ui are terrible. Worse in some cases than their older fire devices. My son was trying to install a couple of apps yesterday and the progress bar got to 100% and then stalled. The little X on the icons to cancel the process didn't work and a reboot didn't help. The apps weren't in the list of installed apps or anywhere else. I ended up having to block them from his profile and then unblock them before they would reset in the UI. Then we downloaded them one at a time which seemed to work. I spent a good 20 minutes trying to find a way to do this. This is just one small example of the frustrations we've had with the device and all of them stem from the poor user experience and confusing choices they've made.

I'm also not impressed with the fire sticks. I don't own any myself but a friend bought four on a whim. He's called me at least a dozen times asking for help with figuring out why they've mysteriously stopped working. It's usually just that the wifi has dropped which happens all the time. Other times it's because his DSL from AT&T is terrible and has reset while he was streaming something and then the device is apparently locked out of any Amazon content most likely due to copyright protection restrictions but the error is just "Video player error this content is currently unavailable." If he swaps devices he can pick up where he left off but that one device is locked out of everything from Amazon for an unknown amount of time while other apps work perfectly.

I like AWS but most of their hardware and other software is terrible.

ja27• 11 years ago

Amazon quietly does pretty good business with some school districts. We've made several 1,000+ unit bulk sales of educational apps through them. It's not iPad numbers, but it's a lot better than we thought.

This device will slip perfectly into that role.

Mithaldu• 11 years ago

I'm unsure about the hardware capabilities of this. I understand that the display cannot display 1080p.

However, if i do copy a 1080p mp4 file with subtitles onto it, is it likely that this one will be able to play it?

kyriakos• 11 years ago

You can find Chinese tablets for a similar price with better specs and cleaner/closer to stock android rom with Google services. If your plan is to get this in order to try and flash cyanogen or something similar then you won't mind the dodgy Chinese warranty.

pavornyoh• 11 years ago

With all the things on the market, why is Amazon doing this? 50 bucks? I am really trying to understand why..

Amazon's New $50 Fire Tablet

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