I have an iPhone 4, what does the Kindle Fire get me, aside from a larger screen?

In My Humble Opinion
1

My nephew and niece both got Kindle Fire tablets for Christmas, they seem to be nice little tablet devices, reasonably quick, nice screen, and just the right size display that strikes a nice balance between the pocketable smartphone and the larger iPad

I currently have an iPhone 4 (just the standard 16gb non-S model) that I’m happy with, the screen size doesn’t bother me, as it keeps the phone easily pocketable

However, I’ve been wanting to play around with the Android OS a bit as well, I know the Fire has a trimmed down version of Gingerbread, with a custom Amazon interface, so it’s not a 100% pure 'droid OS experience

Basically, it’d be used mainly as a websurfing and Netflix media consumption device, but I already have a perfectly cromulent iPhone and MacBook for that, I’d basically be wasting $200 on a tablet device that has less memory, no multitasking, shorter battery life, and does less than my iPhone, I’d basically be buying it for the larger screen

So, anyone have the Kindle Fire? How is it for a power user and/or someone used to a full featured Android/iOS device

Oh, and BTW, don’t bother suggesting an iPad, it’s too expensive and I don’t really like it anyway

Basically, if I already have an iPhone, barring the larger screen on the Fire, is there any compelling reason to get a Fire?

2

I’m actually curious about this, too. A married couple I’m friends with each have an iPhone4 and they also have both an iPad 1 and an iPad 2. For Christmas, one spouse got the other a Kindle Fire. Now, I can understand getting them a regular Kindle (e-ink), but a Kindle Fire? Isn’t that like a crapped down version of what they already have?

Though I fully admit that I don’t know terribly much about the fire. So, I’ll be interested in reading what’s in this thread.

3

Well, screen size means a lot. I can’t imagine watching a movie or reading for more than a few minutes on my iPhone. The Kindle Fire is excellent at both those things.

It’s not a great web surfer, IMO. It’s good, but the screen is too small for a lot of web pages.

I have an iPad, an iPhone, and a Kindle Fire. Here’s what I use each device for:

iPhone: besides using it as a phone, I like it because it’s small and I carry it with me everywhere. I don’t carry the others with me everywhere, so it’s my default device for out-of-the-house web surfing and email reading.

iPad: I grab this when I want to surf the web and I’m not in my office. Also good for reading email, though I tend to use my phone more for this because most of the time my phone is next to me and the iPad is across the room. I also use the iPad extensively as a podcast/music playing device - I have a bluetooth speaker that hooks up to it, and just about every day I have it in the kitchen while I cook/clean up, listening to podcasts or music. I also use it to cook from - I have a recipe folder in Evernote, and also have a few cookbook-type apps.

Kindle Fire: Reading books. Occasionally watch something from Netflix or Amazon, but in general, I’m not a big TV-by-myself person (I watch movies and such but mainly with hubby on the TV). Occasionally will check email or surf the web with it, but web-surfing is touch and go, as (like I said) a lot of web sites just don’t format nicely to the screen size.

So, I like them all, for different reasons. If I had to give up one, it’d be the Fire, but I’m happy I don’t have to give up any of them.

4

Is it different reading books on the Kindle Fire than an Ipad? I mean, I could certainly see the difference between iPad and regular Kindle, but I’d think a fire would be the same thing.

5

No.

I have a 2nd generation Kindle (e-Ink) and when the new ones came out, I ordered a Fire and a Touch (the new e-Ink). I fully expected to keep the Touch and send back the Fire, but I wanted to see them both just in case. I ended up keeping the Fire and sending back the Touch.

Despite all the press the Fire gets, it’s actually a great reading device. First off, it’s FAST. Page turns are WAY faster than the e-Ink versions, and though that’s not really important for straight-through reading, it’s great for when you want to page back a few pages and re-read something. I do that often enough that the eInk Kindles drove me nuts with how long it took to go back 5 or 10 pages, then page forward to where you were reading.

The Fire is also much nicer for reading annotations and looking up words. Both the e-Ink Kindles take a long time to switch to the annotation/definition page, then go back to the page you were reading. So long that I often just didn’t do it. Not so with the Fire.

I can also surf the web for stuff in the book I’m reading, which is great! I read a lot of non-fiction and histories/biographies, and I often find myself wishing I could quickly look up a picture of this historical figure, or a map, or whatever. The Fire is GREAT for this - I just tap the word/name in question, and it brings up a dialog with the option to surf the web for it. I really, really like that feature.

The one thing the e-Ink Kindles are better at is the screens are slightly nicer, but really, I haven’t experienced eye fatigue at all with the Fire. E-Ink is also way better for reading in the sun. I expect that come summer, the Fire will be useless on the beach/sitting outside. I’m keeping my old Kindle for that.

6

The Fire is much smaller than the iPad. I never read on the iPad, because it’s just too big to lay in bed and read, for example. I can’t hold it in one hand because of its size and weight, and that pretty much dooms it as a reader for me. One of the big reasons I really like e-readers is that I get a lot of wrist-ache from reading Big Heavy Books, and that’s not at all the case with the Kindle.

In fact, I just bought the Kindle version of Christopher Hitchen’s latest book, even though I had the physical book from the library. I found myself not wanting to read it because it was so damn big. I just went ahead and spent the money on the Kindle version and it’s so much nicer!

7

It’s funny that you mention the E-Ink Kindles, as I’ve been reading up on them and I find myself more intrigued by them than by the Fire…

The features of the E-Ink Kidles that appeal to me;

Less eyestrain when reading books, I thumbed few a few pages of e-books on my nephew’s Fire, and the backlighting just seemed too harsh (he had it maxed out), I felt a tiny bit of eyestrain from the bright white background, compared to iBooks on my iPhone, the warmer page tint and dark gray text in iBooks seems far more pleasant, even at max brightness

Battery life on the E-Ink Kindle is best described as phenominal, weeks, if not months between charges, and from the demo units I played with at the stores, the Kindle seemed to have the best “almost holding a real wood-pulp book” feel to it, on the Fire, it still feels like I’m reading on an electronic device

I don’t normally use iBooks too much on my phone (mainly because the iBookstore doesn’t have any Douglas Adams titles, what self respecting bookstore would not carry the Hitchhiker’s Five Book Trilogy) and I have the Kindle app on the iPhone, but to me, lover of books and reading, somehow, the E-ink Kindle just seems to have more of a “real book” feel to it

8

Well, snap! Ignorance fought. Thank you, Athena.

Personally, I’ll stick with my iPhone and regular Kindle. Every time I want to get an iPad, I have to stop myself and ask if I’d ever really use it. And the truth of the matter is, of course, that I wouldn’t. Same would go for a fire.

I love how portable my e-ink Kindle is, how easy it is to read, and how I can read it on the beach!

And I totally agree with MacTech: the regular Kindle definitely seems more. . . booklike. . .it’s hard to explain, but it is what it is.

9

The advantages of the kindle fire over apple iphone or ipad are -

  1. it’s bigger than the iphone 4, but smaller than the ipad. It has a screen size decent for watching movies or reading books, but is a lot more comfortable to hold than an ipad.

  2. access to the android marketplace. There’s a good argument for the apple App Store being a better app market, but if you have both an iphone and a kindle fire, you get access to both markets instead of just apple.

  3. price. This would only be a factor if you had to choose between the ipad and kindle fire, so you probably don’t care about it as much. The price difference is so incredibly wide that I honestly believe that the kindle fire removes almost any incentive to buy the wifi-only ipad (which is more than 500 bucks! holy crap!)

10

I think the 7 inch form factor is just right for many things. It’s more comfortable to handle and read compared to the iPhone (which frankly looks tiny to me after getting used to bigger Android phones) while being easier to pick up and carry around than the iPad. For example I think a 7 inch tablet is a great size for board games like chess/ checkers etc. You don’t really need a full 10 inch tablet for that but 7 inches is definitely better than 3.5. The Kindle Fire is also a lot more portable than the iPad. At a pinch it’s just about pocketable and it fits comfortably in a small purse or bag. It’s also the right size for thumb-typing in portrait mode whereas the iPad feels awkward for typing to me at least.

11

I got a Kindle Fire for Christmas and I can only access the Amazon app store. How can I access the Android Marketplace? I thought those apps could only be sideloaded.

Also, I’ve been having a problem with ebooks I’ve checked out from the library via Overdrive. I posted on the Kindle discussion forum over at Amazon but no one has answered yet. I checked out three books from the library but can only read one of them. The other two are a series of pages with the header (book title) and then the title repeated on the page, but no other text is present. Does anyone know what is going on there? They are Kindle editions (I checked) but unreadable on my Fire.

12

I’m typing this on my new Fire!

I still haven’t decided whether or not to keep it. It’s a bit too heavy to hold (especially since I just started suffering from carpal tunnel syndrome) and awkward to set down. The web browser imseems to be working better today, but previously was painfully slow compared to any other wifi device I used. And it doesn’t really do anything my phone or laptop won’t do.

On the other hand, it is a very nice size, the screen is sharp, it streams video very nicely, and it’s nice for reading digital comics (with ComiXology at least; the viewer for Kindle edition DC graphic novels, which can only be read on the Fire, is less nice).

13

One thing I like about reading on my Fire as opposed to my e-ink Kindle is I’m more likely to actually look up words on my Fire.

Looking up words on my Kindle 3 is easy, I just have to scroll down, but the Fire is even easier: I just have to put my finger on the word.

Never underestimate how lazy I am.

But yeah, I have both and I love them separately. I read on the Fire but I enjoy it more on the Kindle 3. The battery life is much longer.

14

Well, I stopped down at Worst Buy, looked at a bunch of e-ink e-readers, and came home with…

A Barnes and Noble Nook Simple Touch!

It was down to two competitors, the Amazon Kindle Touch and the B&N Nook Simple Touch.

Why did the Nook win?

1; No smegging Ads!, I HATE Ads with a passion, sure, I know I could get a Kindle Touch from Amazon directly for $99 for the ad-free version, OR buy the $99 “Special Offers” model at BB, then pay an ADDITIONAL $40 for the “privilege” of having Amazon remove the ads from the “Special Offer” model (sorta’ smacks of a bit of a “protection” racket to me, pay extra to not get the stupid bloody ads)

2; More polished interface, the Nook interface just seemed simpler, more logical, better thought out, the Kindle’s interface, from what little I could see with the extremely limited “demo” mode, seemed a bit more clunky, plus, I liked the fact that the demo model Nook wasn’t hobbled by a limited functionality demo mode, I could fully access all features of the Nook on the display model

3; Nook is running a pared down copy of the Android OS - just a cool piece of trivia is all

4; Nook has a Micro SD card slot - the factory 2 GB of memory can be expanded to a full 32 GB

5; the Nook seemed slightly faster on page turning, and the E-Ink seemed marginally clearer and crisper

6; the Nook’s physical buttons seem more logically laid out; a flush-mounted power button on the top rear of the device, requires a two second push to power off completely or boot up, no accidental power ons/offs here, the “n” Home button is unobtrusive, and best of all, in addition to having a responsive touch screen, it also has a pair of page-turning pushbuttons to the left and right side of the screen, so it can be held in one hand and pages can be flipped back and forth without using the touchscreen

On the downside, it has no audio out, so no audiobooks, or music, and there is no way to surf the net on it, but that’s a non-issue, I have an iPhone that’s a much better media player, as well as a MacBook, all I wanted for an e-reader was just that, a device to read electronic books, and the Nook excels at that duty, it just feels like holding a real book, the size, form factor, weight, everything just makes reading books on a Nook far more pleasant than on my iPhone, even when using the Kindle, Nook, and iBooks apps…

15

Hah! I had the exact opposite experience comparing a Kindle Touch and the Nook at Target. The Nook was locked down in demo mode, and the Kindle allowed me to play with it a lot more.

The Kindle Special Offers version is $99 at Amazon, as well. Unless I misread, it seemed like you thought could get an ad free version from Amazon at the lower price. But, that’s not true. The ad free version is $139.

I got the Kindle Touch Special Offers for Christmas and I love it. I don’t care much about the ads (from what I understand sometimes the special offers are even things I would want, so that makes it so I might even like it.) since you can’t see them while you read. And, I like the interface, size, and the ability to just touch a word and get a definition. (read a bunch today, and saw a lot of words I wasn’t absolutely sure about, so I got to play with that a bit. I’m sure the novelty will wear off, and I will go back to relying on context. For now? Neat!

16

Amazon recently pushed out a mandatory system upgrade. It apparently kills any attempts for users to install their own apps.