My tablet history and Kindle Fire (7th Gen) review
My first tablet was an Acer A500 which ran Honeycomb (Android 3.0). I used that laptop for everything – reading, pictures, studying, and using it to project games in the children’s class I taught at the time. It was used more than my laptop, phone, and desktop combined. It served its purpose until my wife accidentally knocked it off the kitchen counter (it was laying flat) and it got a huge dent. It never was the same after that incident. I eventually got rid of it after it no longer held a charge due to the damage it received.
The next tablet I purchased was a Kindle fire 2nd gen which I gave to my wife and borrowed it when needed. Life was great. Then, as a reward for good behavior, we let our children play the games and apps we purchased on the Kindle. Our children are so well behaved (thanks to some awesome parentig tips we received in our Adult Bible Class at church) that my wife no longer had enough Kindle time to do her reading. This is when I bought her a 5th gen Kindle fire. The difference between versions impressed me. I liked the thinner design and the new UI was very intriguing. I made a determination if I ever wanted a new tablet I would get myself a Kindle fire. (I was not in the market for one as I was a happy 6 inch phablet user.)
Recently, I have had a desire to reduce my reading list by actually reading the books. At first I tried reading from my phablet, but alas, a 6inch screen is not ideal for reading large amounts of text – even if you have a high DPI phone such as my Google Nexus 6. This has led me to purchase a Kindle fire 7th gen which was released on June 7th 2017.
It has the same intriguing design as the 5th gen device, but has better battery life and more external storage capacity. When I first unboxed and turned on the device, I was happy at how little I had to do to get my new Kindle operational. After 10 minutes of using Kindle fire OS (which is just Android without Google), I quickly realized just how attached I am to Google services. Most of my daily use apps – such as Dropbox and JuiceSSH – were not available. Did I make a mistake buying this $70 device (+$30 case and $9 tax)? Thankfully, there is an alternative and it works quite well – it doesn’t even require rooting your device either!
Wow, after installing the four apps, running a Google play services update, and downloading my needed apps, I am really enjoying my Kindle fire 7th gen! Everything is working as expected; albeit, I have to wait a few milliseconds longer over my phablet to do common tasks. The screen size is perfect, the weight and style is also perfect, and I was able to be different and get a yellow one. (My wife has blue, black is the color I usually get, and red seemed too plastic.)