Micro Mart - 10 March 2016_

26 Issue 1404

InstallingAndroidapps

on an AmazonFire tablet

increasesits usefulness, as

Chris Salterdemonstrates

Feeding

TheFire

A

mazon’s phone was never a runaway success. It was

released in July 2014, but Amazon kept dropping the

price, before it stopped selling the device in August 2015,

with no follow-up announced.

However, that hasn’t stopped it with the Fire tablets. Amazon

released the first Kindle Fire tablet in 2011 (a 7” tablet), running

a modified version of Android called Fire OS. Since then, Amazon

has increased the Fire range to include different sizes, ranging

from 6 inches all the way up to 10 inches.

At the end of September 2015, Amazonreleased the

cheapest Kindle yet: the third-generation Fire (although the

Kindle states it’s a fifth-generation Kindle Fire in the settings,

as this counts the other Kindle Fire tablets, such as the HD

range). The device costs £50, which is significantly cheaper

than the majority of the its competitors. Usually device costs

are slashed by offering underpowered and poor performing

tablets, but with the Fire, this isn’t quite the case. While the

specifications are nothing to shout about, they still providea

reasonable experience in use, in comparison to some of the

cheap Chinese-made tablets running Android.

Amazon uses the devices to help sell its Prime service. By

getting an Amazon tablet, you have a device that has easy access

to all of Amazons prime services, such as TV and film streaming,

books, music, cloud storage and, of course, Amazon shopping.