![]() We wish the battery icon showed either the percentage or time remaining, instead of just a small battery. To mark something as a Favorite, delete the item from the carousel or remove it off of the Fire HD entirely, simply press and hold the icon to bring up those options.Īlong the top of the display are icons for the Wi-Fi connection, battery life and the current time. Press it, and you're presented with a window that slides up from the bottom with all of your favorites, be it Apps, Movies or Books. Instead, there's a small star in the lower left, which appears elsewhere throughout the interface. Tellingly, you have to scroll to the right to access the Silk Web browser Amazon emphasizes its content storefront first and foremost.Ĭlick to EnlargeThe lower shelves on the original Fire's interface are gone. There are also a few more items listed in the navigation bar toward the top of the screen, including Games. It makes it feel less folksy and more universal, though it still feels odd that, in landscape mode, the largest icon is offset to the left - just not as far as before. Gone is the image of the wooden bookshelf only the carousel of titles remains. Once on the home screen, the Kindle Fire HD's interface is more minimalist than the original Fire. And, Amazon will let customers remove them for a one-time $15 charge. Fortunately, you simply swipe it away to get to the home screen. Somewhat annoyingly, the lock screen on the Kindle Fire HD shows an ad or a special offer. While you can run Android apps, the entire interface is custom Amazon, and tailored toward buying and consuming its content. By the same token, music was so loud that buying an external speaker for this device might be overkill (though you can, thanks to integrated Bluetooth).Ĭlick to EnlargeThe Fire HD is an Android tablet in name only. The booming sound coming from Amazon's tablet made Google's slate sound faint. ![]() When we played the same "Taken 2" on both the Fire HD and Nexus 7, it was no contest. There's an option to turn it off in the control panel, but deactivating this feature makes everything sound atrocious. Much of the credit goes to the Dolby Digital Plus technology. While slightly hollow - music and movies had a bit of an echo - they were more than powerful at full volume. However, much to our relief, the cuplike shape of our hands as we held the tablet caused the sound to be directed straight at us. ![]() We initially thought their placement, on the lower third of the Fire HD, would cause sound to be muffled when we held the tablet in both hands. This brightness advantage came in handy when reading content outdoors the Fire HD's screen was easier to see and exhibited less glare.Ĭlick to EnlargeOn the back of the Fire HD, on either side, are two speaker grilles. Both took the same amount of time to flip from one page to the next in a book, though.Īt 436 lux, the Fire HD is slightly dimmer than the original Fire (460 lux), but outshone both the Nexus 7 (314 lux) as well as the category average (355 lux). Not only is text less pixelated, but colors are richer, and you can see more of individual websites, too. Text on websites looks leagues better on the Fire HD than the original. When watching the trailer of "Taken 2" side by side with the Nexus 7, both Amazon's and Google's tablet looked about the same if anything, images were a hair crisper on the Nexus 7, as that device has a native YouTube app. The IPS display also made viewing angles superb we could view the Fire HD from almost any angle. While watching the HD version of "The Hunger Games," the colors on Jennifer Lawrence's flaming dress, as well as Elizabeth Banks' outlandish attire, popped off the screen. Click to EnlargeWhile it's now only on a par, pixel-wise, with competitors such as the Nexus 7, the Fire HD's 1280 x 800-pixel display is a definite improvement over the previous generation.
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