Amazon Kindle Fire gets some CyanogenMod 7 love
With full CyanogenMod 7 support on the way, the Amazon Kindle Fire just got much more appealing
Just a few weeks after the Amazon Kindle Fire received a healthy dose of root, the first partial custom ROM has made its way to the tablet. The ROM is CyanogenMod 7, the most widely distributed and highly praised Android custom ROM of all time.
At the moment, quite a number of features on the ROM aren’t working properly. For instance, you’ll lose your integrated Amazon features if you install the ROM, but important features like WiFi are available, which should make the tablet half-way usable. Multi-touch, though, is not working at all and the software seems pretty slow overall.
Software bugs aside, it’s going to be awhile until a fully functional port is available for download. Probably another two weeks, or maybe longer. For those familiar with ROMs, that’s an eternity in the hacker world.
So, is the Amazon Kindle Fire the most hackable tablet of all time? It’s too early to tell, but considering the hardware and the price, I wouldn’t be surprised. If you thought the Fire was popular before, just wait until it gets Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. That, my friends, will be the day hackers and normal consumers unite.
If you’re feeling adventurous and want to give your Amazon Kindle Fire a makeover, head over to XDA-developers for the risky details. As always, flash with caution!
Image Credit: AndoidandMe
Categories: Mobile News Tags: Amazon, CyanogenMod, fire., gets, Kindle, love, some
Amazon prepping 8.9 inch Kindle Fire for Q2 of 2012
Rumor has it that Amazon will ship an 8.9-inch Kindle Fire starting in Q2 of 2012
A larger, 8.9-inch Kindle Fire tablet could come as early as the 2Q of 2012.
According to DigiTimes‘ unnamed sources, Amazon has opted for the 8.9-inch model over the 10.1 inch model to avoid competition:
Amazon is developing 8.9- and 10.1-inch next-generation Kindle Fire models and has selected an 8.9-inch model for launch by the end of the second quarter of 2012 due to LG Display’s and Samsung Electronics’ promotion of 8.9-inch panels and to avoid competition with 9.7-10.1-inch products offered by other vendors, the sources said. Foxconn will begin ODM production of 8.9-inch Kindle Fire in the middle of the second quarter of 2012, the sources indicated.
Of course, it has been rumored for quite some time that Amazon would offer several flavors of the Kindle Fire, and its recent success with consumers makes this all but an inevitablility.
In fact, CNET cites a ChangeWave Research report that claims 22 percent of future tablet buyers want Amazon’s Kindle Fire. The iPad is the only device that beat the Kindle Fire with 65 percent.
But that’s not all Amazon migh have up its sleeve. As previously reported, it seems likely that Amazon will also release a Kindle smartphone sometime in 2012.
Amazon Kindle Fire review roundup
We round up some initial reviews of the Amazon Kindle Fire from some of our favorite technology news sites
Amazon has made waves with its Kindle reader and has created a very tough act to follow, even for itself, so it comes as no surprise that many were expecting huge things from the the company’s next major product sporting the Kindle branding – the Amazon Kindle Fire tablet.
The anticipation surrounding the Fire has been extremely great and the numberof reviews since the recent release can only be described as review madness. Amazon has really stepped up their game though, for starters we’re looking at a dual-core 1.2 GHz ARM processor, a beautiful 7-inch display, and Android 2.3 Gingerbread.
That being said, before starting the round up, one great thing about rounding up a number of reviews in one place is finding out what numerous sources agree upon about a particular piece of hardware and what they think overall.
Alright, here we go with the roundup:
- CNET: “It’s affordable, has most of the apps you’d want, and it’s easy to use, but the tablet lacks GPS, removable storage, and even cameras or mics.”
- New York Times: “The Fire deserves to be a disruptive, gigantic force — it’s a cross between a Kindle and an iPad, a more compact Internet and video viewer at a great price. But at the moment, it needs a lot more polish; if you’re used to an iPad or “real” Android tablet, its software gremlins will drive you nuts.”
- Engadget: “The Kindle Fire is quite an achievement at $ 200. It’s a perfectly usable tablet that feels good in the hand and has a respectably good looking display up front. Yes, power users will find themselves a little frustrated with what they can and can’t do on the thing without access to the Android Market but, in these carefree days of cloud-based apps ruling the world, increasingly all you need is a good browser. That the Fire has. This thing feels incredibly solid, as if Amazon simply put a chisel to a big piece of slate, gave it a good whack and then put the resulting slab into a Frustration-Free box.”
- Gizmodo: “If you like what Amazon Prime has going on in the kitchen, the Fire is a terrific seat. It’s not as powerful or capable as an iPad, but it’s also a sliver of the price—and that $ 200 will let you jack into the Prime catalog (and the rest of your media collection) easily and comfortably. Simply, the Fire is a wonderful IRL compliment to Amazon’s digital abundance. It’s a terrific, compact little friend, and—is this even saying anything?—the best Android tablet to date.”
- PC Mag: “The Kindle Fire is one of a kind, at least this week. It’s the first affordable, easy-to-use general-purpose tablet. It doesn’t replace the Apple iPad: It complements the iPad, which is bigger, more powerful, more expensive, and has far more apps. While there are other good small tablets out there, most notably the Acer Iconia Tab A100, they’re also more expensive and just more fiddly. While geeks have more options with a “generic” Honeycomb tablet, non-geeks get less guidance as to what to do with them.”
- The Verge: “There’s no question that the Fire is a really terrific tablet for its price. The amount of content you have access to — and the ease of getting to that content — is notable to say the least. The device is decently designed, and the software — while lacking some polish — is still excellent compared to pretty much anything in this range (and that includes the Nook Color). It’s a well thought out tablet that can only get better as the company refines the software. It’s not perfect, but it’s a great start, and at $ 200, that may be all Amazon needs this holiday shopping season.”
As I’m sure you guessed, reviewer’s opinions varied across the net, but they all seemed to agree that the Amazon Kindle Fire is a great tablet for the price, but its performance is nowhere near that of other Android tablets or the iPad. A cheap, fantastic tablet one might say.
The Kindle Fire sports a 7-inch display, 1 GHz dual-core TI OMAP processor, 512 MB of RAM and 8 GB of on-board storage. It also features an improved Silk Browser, that makes browsing much faster by processing results in the cloud. Very similar to Opera Mobile.
And of course, there’s also access to music, videos, books and thousands of apps from the Amazon App Store. Access to the Amazon app store really makes this a much more desirable product. This, among the other features, makes the Amazon Kindle Fire a fantastic, usable tablet.
Definitely an amazing deal. It seems the reviewers agree too.
Image Credit: The Inquisitr
Amazon Kindle Fire review roundup
We round up some initial reviews of the Amazon Kindle Fire from some of our favorite technology news sites
Amazon has made waves with its Kindle reader and has created a very tough act to follow, even for itself, so it comes as no surprise that many were expecting huge things from the the company’s next major product sporting the Kindle branding – the Amazon Kindle Fire tablet.
The anticipation surrounding the Fire has been extremely great and the numberof reviews since the recent release can only be described as review madness. Amazon has really stepped up their game though, for starters we’re looking at a dual-core 1.2 GHz ARM processor, a beautiful 7-inch display, and Android 2.3 Gingerbread.
That being said, before starting the round up, one great thing about rounding up a number of reviews in one place is finding out what numerous sources agree upon about a particular piece of hardware and what they think overall.
Alright, here we go with the roundup:
- CNET: “It’s affordable, has most of the apps you’d want, and it’s easy to use, but the tablet lacks GPS, removable storage, and even cameras or mics.”
- New York Times: “The Fire deserves to be a disruptive, gigantic force — it’s a cross between a Kindle and an iPad, a more compact Internet and video viewer at a great price. But at the moment, it needs a lot more polish; if you’re used to an iPad or “real” Android tablet, its software gremlins will drive you nuts.”
- Engadget: “The Kindle Fire is quite an achievement at $ 200. It’s a perfectly usable tablet that feels good in the hand and has a respectably good looking display up front. Yes, power users will find themselves a little frustrated with what they can and can’t do on the thing without access to the Android Market but, in these carefree days of cloud-based apps ruling the world, increasingly all you need is a good browser. That the Fire has. This thing feels incredibly solid, as if Amazon simply put a chisel to a big piece of slate, gave it a good whack and then put the resulting slab into a Frustration-Free box.”
- Gizmodo: “If you like what Amazon Prime has going on in the kitchen, the Fire is a terrific seat. It’s not as powerful or capable as an iPad, but it’s also a sliver of the price—and that $ 200 will let you jack into the Prime catalog (and the rest of your media collection) easily and comfortably. Simply, the Fire is a wonderful IRL compliment to Amazon’s digital abundance. It’s a terrific, compact little friend, and—is this even saying anything?—the best Android tablet to date.”
- PC Mag: “The Kindle Fire is one of a kind, at least this week. It’s the first affordable, easy-to-use general-purpose tablet. It doesn’t replace the Apple iPad: It complements the iPad, which is bigger, more powerful, more expensive, and has far more apps. While there are other good small tablets out there, most notably the Acer Iconia Tab A100, they’re also more expensive and just more fiddly. While geeks have more options with a “generic” Honeycomb tablet, non-geeks get less guidance as to what to do with them.”
- The Verge: “There’s no question that the Fire is a really terrific tablet for its price. The amount of content you have access to — and the ease of getting to that content — is notable to say the least. The device is decently designed, and the software — while lacking some polish — is still excellent compared to pretty much anything in this range (and that includes the Nook Color). It’s a well thought out tablet that can only get better as the company refines the software. It’s not perfect, but it’s a great start, and at $ 200, that may be all Amazon needs this holiday shopping season.”
As I’m sure you guessed, reviewer’s opinions varied across the net, but they all seemed to agree that the Amazon Kindle Fire is a great tablet for the price, but its performance is nowhere near that of other Android tablets or the iPad. A cheap, fantastic tablet one might say.
The Kindle Fire sports a 7-inch display, 1 GHz dual-core TI OMAP processor, 512 MB of RAM and 8 GB of on-board storage. It also features an improved Silk Browser, that makes browsing much faster by processing results in the cloud. Very similar to Opera Mobile.
And of course, there’s also access to music, videos, books and thousands of apps from the Amazon App Store. Access to the Amazon app store really makes this a much more desirable product. This, among the other features, makes the Amazon Kindle Fire a fantastic, usable tablet.
Definitely an amazing deal. It seems the reviewers agree too.
Image Credit: The Inquisitr
Amazon Kindle Fire review roundup
We round up some initial reviews of the Amazon Kindle Fire from some of our favorite technology news sites
Amazon has made waves with its Kindle reader and has created a very tough act to follow, even for itself, so it comes as no surprise that many were expecting huge things from the the company’s next major product sporting the Kindle branding – the Amazon Kindle Fire tablet.
The anticipation surrounding the Fire has been extremely great and the numberof reviews since the recent release can only be described as review madness. Amazon has really stepped up their game though, for starters we’re looking at a dual-core 1.2 GHz ARM processor, a beautiful 7-inch display, and Android 2.3 Gingerbread.
That being said, before starting the round up, one great thing about rounding up a number of reviews in one place is finding out what numerous sources agree upon about a particular piece of hardware and what they think overall.
Alright, here we go with the roundup:
- CNET: “It’s affordable, has most of the apps you’d want, and it’s easy to use, but the tablet lacks GPS, removable storage, and even cameras or mics.”
- New York Times: “The Fire deserves to be a disruptive, gigantic force — it’s a cross between a Kindle and an iPad, a more compact Internet and video viewer at a great price. But at the moment, it needs a lot more polish; if you’re used to an iPad or “real” Android tablet, its software gremlins will drive you nuts.”
- Engadget: “The Kindle Fire is quite an achievement at $ 200. It’s a perfectly usable tablet that feels good in the hand and has a respectably good looking display up front. Yes, power users will find themselves a little frustrated with what they can and can’t do on the thing without access to the Android Market but, in these carefree days of cloud-based apps ruling the world, increasingly all you need is a good browser. That the Fire has. This thing feels incredibly solid, as if Amazon simply put a chisel to a big piece of slate, gave it a good whack and then put the resulting slab into a Frustration-Free box.”
- Gizmodo: “If you like what Amazon Prime has going on in the kitchen, the Fire is a terrific seat. It’s not as powerful or capable as an iPad, but it’s also a sliver of the price—and that $ 200 will let you jack into the Prime catalog (and the rest of your media collection) easily and comfortably. Simply, the Fire is a wonderful IRL compliment to Amazon’s digital abundance. It’s a terrific, compact little friend, and—is this even saying anything?—the best Android tablet to date.”
- PC Mag: “The Kindle Fire is one of a kind, at least this week. It’s the first affordable, easy-to-use general-purpose tablet. It doesn’t replace the Apple iPad: It complements the iPad, which is bigger, more powerful, more expensive, and has far more apps. While there are other good small tablets out there, most notably the Acer Iconia Tab A100, they’re also more expensive and just more fiddly. While geeks have more options with a “generic” Honeycomb tablet, non-geeks get less guidance as to what to do with them.”
- The Verge: “There’s no question that the Fire is a really terrific tablet for its price. The amount of content you have access to — and the ease of getting to that content — is notable to say the least. The device is decently designed, and the software — while lacking some polish — is still excellent compared to pretty much anything in this range (and that includes the Nook Color). It’s a well thought out tablet that can only get better as the company refines the software. It’s not perfect, but it’s a great start, and at $ 200, that may be all Amazon needs this holiday shopping season.”
As I’m sure you guessed, reviewer’s opinions varied across the net, but they all seemed to agree that the Amazon Kindle Fire is a great tablet for the price, but its performance is nowhere near that of other Android tablets or the iPad. A cheap, fantastic tablet one might say.
The Kindle Fire sports a 7-inch display, 1 GHz dual-core TI OMAP processor, 512 MB of RAM and 8 GB of on-board storage. It also features an improved Silk Browser, that makes browsing much faster by processing results in the cloud. Very similar to Opera Mobile.
And of course, there’s also access to music, videos, books and thousands of apps from the Amazon App Store. Access to the Amazon app store really makes this a much more desirable product. This, among the other features, makes the Amazon Kindle Fire a fantastic, usable tablet.
Definitely an amazing deal. It seems the reviewers agree too.
Image Credit: The Inquisitr