The Good:
* Nice, simple packaging (see photo below)
* Same power plug as the Nexus
* Bright crisp screen
* Borrowing books (Prime Members) is cool, and free Prime videos work well. (Amazon Prime is an unbelievable deal.)
* Scrolling through Recent Apps/Pages on the homescreen is slick, as are the Favorite App shelves
* Of course the price. Nice device for $200.
The Bad:
* No Mic or Camera
* Volume buttons would be handy
* The screen can't be made very dark-- can't imagine reading a book on this.
* 7" feels like an awkward in-between size, at first at least.
* Videos you copy over don't show up under "Videos" on the home screen, only under the Gallery app. (Music you copy does show up under "Music" though)
* Not the standard Gmail Android app.
The Evil:
* Amazon's Silk browser caches/routes everything through their servers for "enhanced performance". (I installed Dolphin to avoid this.)
* Any attempts to access Google's market.android.com open up the Amazon App Store app, which is much more limited. Same thing with installing from AppBrain, GetJar etc.
I understand Amazon's installing only their own app store. And I have no beef with their wanting to sell movies and music via these devices-- Amazon's my media store of choice. But actively hamstringing the device to restrict the apps you can install is evil. It's especially evil to block Google, as they provided Amazon the OS for free.
There are ways around this blockade like "side-loading" via your PC, or you can do direct downloads of APK files from some sites like apktop. (First, change Settings > Device > Allow Installation of Applications to "On".) Of course, installing software from a site you'd never heard of before today may not be the wisest move.. And some APKs--for standard Google apps like Maps, Gmail, YouTube--are hard to come by on these sites.
Hoping Amazon eases up the tight control with time.
* Nice, simple packaging (see photo below)
* Same power plug as the Nexus
* Bright crisp screen
* Borrowing books (Prime Members) is cool, and free Prime videos work well. (Amazon Prime is an unbelievable deal.)
* Scrolling through Recent Apps/Pages on the homescreen is slick, as are the Favorite App shelves
* Of course the price. Nice device for $200.
The Bad:
* No Mic or Camera
* Volume buttons would be handy
* The screen can't be made very dark-- can't imagine reading a book on this.
* 7" feels like an awkward in-between size, at first at least.
* Videos you copy over don't show up under "Videos" on the home screen, only under the Gallery app. (Music you copy does show up under "Music" though)
* Not the standard Gmail Android app.
The Evil:
* Amazon's Silk browser caches/routes everything through their servers for "enhanced performance". (I installed Dolphin to avoid this.)
* Any attempts to access Google's market.android.com open up the Amazon App Store app, which is much more limited. Same thing with installing from AppBrain, GetJar etc.
I understand Amazon's installing only their own app store. And I have no beef with their wanting to sell movies and music via these devices-- Amazon's my media store of choice. But actively hamstringing the device to restrict the apps you can install is evil. It's especially evil to block Google, as they provided Amazon the OS for free.
There are ways around this blockade like "side-loading" via your PC, or you can do direct downloads of APK files from some sites like apktop. (First, change Settings > Device > Allow Installation of Applications to "On".) Of course, installing software from a site you'd never heard of before today may not be the wisest move.. And some APKs--for standard Google apps like Maps, Gmail, YouTube--are hard to come by on these sites.
Hoping Amazon eases up the tight control with time.
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