Amazon Kindle Fire Review
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Vivek Gowri on November 29, 2011 3:31 AM EST- Posted in
- Tablets
- Mobile
- Amazon
- Kindle Fire
- Kindle
Battery Life: 6 Hours
I swear the Kindle Fire has a hard stop at six hours of continuous use. Regardless of the nature of my benchmarks, the Fire always dropped out after six hours of use. I ran our video playback test, our tablet browsing test and our smartphone browsing test - in every case the Kindle died in around 6 hours:
Obviously these only matter if you're going to be using the Fire as a tablet. As a Kindle, you can expect longer battery life as there's simply less work going on and the majority of the SoC is just power gated during that time.
Either way you're still limited by the fact that the small chassis of the Fire can only accommodate a 16Whr battery. That's around three times the capacity of a high end smartphone battery, but it has to cope with a much larger (and more power hungry) display.
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tiffanykennedy - Wednesday, November 30, 2011 - link
My bf got me a Kindle Fire for my birthday and I love it. It's lightweight and easy to use straight out of the box. The first thing I recommend anyone with a new Kindle do is install the nook app. We got our instructions from www.kindlemad.com through google.It basically unlocks all the Android marketplace apps and unlocks the device. Super happy!
Reflex - Wednesday, November 30, 2011 - link
I would strongly suggest rerunning the performance tests. Just my subjective point of view, but perf just got a major boost. The browser is certainly faster, and so is the book reader. The UI and tap response also seem much improved. All of the Fire's on the market should autoupdate in the next couple days...VivekGowri - Wednesday, November 30, 2011 - link
Downloading, I'll post my findings later today :)Reflex - Wednesday, November 30, 2011 - link
Thanks, wanting to make certain I'm not imagining things.Reflex - Sunday, December 4, 2011 - link
Any update on this? Or waiting for the Nook Tablet review?Chaser - Wednesday, November 30, 2011 - link
As I have stated I don't believe the Fire will TAKE marketshare from Apple. But just like the airline price wars of the 80s and 90s, the Fire with its undeniable market recognition will put A tablet in the hands of those that would not have considered a tablet before.With Apple holding 90% of tablet sales I personally only see iPads in use when I am on business travel. I very rarely seen an Android tablet anywhere in use in public except for a Color Nook. So the tablet scene is expensive iPads and their happy owners. I think the Fire will change that.
Toadster - Wednesday, November 30, 2011 - link
I'm curious how a PC or regular laptop would fare against the Android/iOS versions of the GL Benchmarks... is there one made?kawatwo - Wednesday, November 30, 2011 - link
John Phillips in C&D. Nice! I have the 8 inch Vizio tablet. I bought it to read my digital magazines with mostly as I subscribe to several on Zinio. Zooming only takes a couple taps so that doesn't bother me. You can also pinch to zoom. I am assuming the Kindle works the same way? The Kindle and Nook do seem like a lot of performance for the money if you only need to do the things they can actually do.freedomfries - Monday, December 5, 2011 - link
what kills the competition with this piece is the price, though it's still not as impressive as the iPad's to me... at least when I hold and use one.elestein - Saturday, March 23, 2019 - link
I have been using Kindle fire from last one year. Its was simply superb. As student its very useful for me. Any way to get it for lower cost for my brother?