Warm? Amazon - "used-good" Kindle Fire HD 7" (2012) "tate" $56.85 w/ "special offers"

hardware_failure

hardware_failure

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Mar 21, 2008
Messages
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This is a pretty hot item on SD.

Not an amazing tablet [strike=]but all reports I have seen mention that these are in excellent condition. [/s]There are some mixed results in quality of units that people are receiving, as might be expected with a used unit, but thats one big reason to buy something like this from amazon. Could be great for kids that are always stealing your nicer tablet (raises hand)

Link

Comes with a usb cable and thats it. No warranty. No AC charger either, but supposedly never did even as new.

Normally this would be meh but these can supposedly be rooted and then loaded with Cyanogenmod 11, making it a decent quality tablet for the price. (the newer kindle fires cannot be rooted as of yet)

Obviously this would break the "special offers" which supposedly are extra media content stuffs and ads that pop up once in a while with cold to warm to sizziling hot deals. The super hot ones sell out in minutes tho.
 
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My wife bought an iRulu 7" tablet for $48. I groaned. It's actually a really nice little tablet and runs well. I may pick one up.
 
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Yeah Ive been looking for a tablet at this price point ($60ish) for a while.

Theres tons of the cheapo units similar to the irulu you mentioned that are usually:

+Fast modern processor
+In general feature rich
+SD slot

-Garbage screen
-Poor build quality in general
-Poor battery life and sometimes dont even charge via usb (use a separate ac adapter)
-Usually low amount of system storage
-Often poor wifi

Compared to this Kindle Fire HD,

+Solid build
+Excellent screen
+Excellent sound
+Good battery life
+Decent system storage (16 or 32GB)
+Good wifi

-No SD card (this really makes me sad, would be hot if it had one)
-Amazon restrictive OS (unless you root/mod)
-Dated/slower CPU/GPU
 
I have the exact tablet and it is indeed rooted with Cyanogenmod 11.

It makes it a damn fine little tablet.

Warranty doesn't matter because CM will void it anyway :)

If you consume a lot of Amazon stuff (Prime movies, music, etc...) there's no need to root it. It's excellent for that out of the box and you would preserve whatever warranty they are providing.

hardware_failure said:
This is a pretty hot item on SD.

Not an amazing tablet but all reports I have seen mention that these are in excellent condition. Could be great for kids that are always stealing your nicer tablet (raises hand)

Link

Comes with a usb cable and thats it. No warranty. No AC charger either, but supposedly never did even as new.

Normally this would be meh but these can supposedly be rooted and then loaded with Cyanogenmod 11, making it a decent quality tablet for the price. (the newer kindle fires cannot be rooted as of yet)

Obviously this would break the "special offers" which supposedly are extra media content stuffs and ads that pop up once in a while with cold to warm to sizziling hot deals. The super hot ones sell out in minutes tho.
Click to expand...
 
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Got mine in the mail today. Definitely not excellent condition buy it's not horrible. Few light scratches on screen with 1 or 2 of them being visible during use. I was really looking for a cheap tablet for wife and kid so I'll most likely keep. Just a heads up for those interested.

It came with wall charger as well.
 
m33pm33p said:
Got mine in the mail today. Definitely not excellent condition buy it's not horrible. Few light scratches on screen with 1 or 2 of them being visible during use. I was really looking for a cheap tablet for wife and kid so I'll most likely keep. Just a heads up for those interested.

It came with wall charger as well.
Click to expand...
Interesting that yours came with a wall charger but not in excellent condition, thats the oppisite of what some others have recieved. Also I guess it could be a matter of opinion of what one calls excellent versus not bad. More reports are coming in to SD and seem to be a bit of a mix so far, but nothing terrible other than one that might be defective and some possible charging issues.

What kind of box did yours come in? Generic looking or Amazon branded? How does the screen look?

What "condition" did you order?
Like New Condition $63.95 (was only available for a short while, oos)
Good Condition $56.85 (seems to be mostly what they have had stock of)
Acceptable Condition $53.30 (pop up once in a while, currently usually oos)

Thanks.
 
Picked up two of these. Will update with condition when I receive them Friday. Definitely putting cyangenomod on them when they arrive.
 
hardware_failure said:
Interesting that yours came with a wall charger but not in excellent condition, thats the oppisite of what some others have recieved. Also I guess it could be a matter of opinion of what one calls excellent versus not bad. More reports are coming in to SD and seem to be a bit of a mix so far, but nothing terrible other than one that might be defective and some possible charging issues.

What kind of box did yours come in? Generic looking or Amazon branded? How does the screen look?

What "condition" did you order?
Like New Condition $63.95 (was only available for a short while, oos)
Good Condition $56.85 (seems to be mostly what they have had stock of)
Acceptable Condition $53.30 (pop up once in a while, currently usually oos)

Thanks.
Click to expand...

Good is all that they had left. I wish I would have ordered like new earlier in the day.

Box was generic but seemed to be made specifically for shipping a tablet, was actually pretty cool.

I lied as well, looks like it was just the USB cable wrapped around what I thought was a wall charger, turned out to be black cardboard lol.

Regardless, FWIW, a good buy imo. I was reading a book on it last night and really couldnt notice anything. My wife and kid will probably have it destroyed within a month anyways and I dont think youre finding a decent tablet at this price anywhere else.

IMO worth the money.
 
Was going to say , own one myself and used various ROM's on it, buy one and head over to xda developers and root and ROM that sucker, makes it ALOT faster and much better battery life.
 
m33pm33p said:
Good is all that they had left. I wish I would have ordered like new earlier in the day.

Box was generic but seemed to be made specifically for shipping a tablet, was actually pretty cool.

I lied as well, looks like it was just the USB cable wrapped around what I thought was a wall charger, turned out to be black cardboard lol.

Regardless, FWIW, a good buy imo. I was reading a book on it last night and really couldnt notice anything. My wife and kid will probably have it destroyed within a month anyways and I dont think youre finding a decent tablet at this price anywhere else.

IMO worth the money.
Click to expand...
Great, thanks for the updates. Mine are reported as on a truck so Im chompin at the bit waiting for them. These will def be for kids. 1 for sure will get CM but Im still debating on leaving the Amazon os on for the toddler. Ive played with it a little bit and its actually very nice as a simplistic experience for beginners, also going to check out Amazon Free time. I will report back when they come in and Ive checked them out.
 
I bought 10. Yes Im crazy. Nieces and nephews are going to love them.

Box they ALL came in:
2urknbq.jpg


Opened:
2zrowvc.jpg


Layed out: Got 3 brown box 7 black retail looking boxes:
2ahtx6p.jpg


1 of the "retail looking" was missing the 2 tape stickers, one had them unstuck and dirty.
2j69s9x.jpg


The 3 brown boxes:
24vo2yu.jpg


7 "retail looking":
2mng7bn.jpg


First brown box open:
8z2z5u.jpg


First unit out of brown box:
34qmv4o.jpg


Back of first brown box unit. VERY clean:
2wflft5.jpg


Only 1 tiny scratch on first unit, by micro usb:
2zz2amd.jpg


Screen looks brand new, 0 scratches:
4i0axk.jpg


Came 88% charged:
30mwghu.jpg


Version info before update. MFer autoupdated the second I left it idle for a few min. ARG!
2cnfp5i.jpg


Second unit opened, first of the "retail looking" box:
2096r7r.jpg


Both units only came with micro usb cable, but this nicer boxed one came with a manual and some other documentation I didnt bother looking at:
15x36kx.jpg


Back of this unit - some noticeable small scratches on back. Def does not look new but the scratches are very minor, they actually show up more in the pic vs in the flesh:
2pts6c4.jpg


Had some smudges and dirt on the screen. They wiped right off. This unit DOES have 2 super fine scratches on its screen. They are so fine tho that the 3 pics I took dont show them so I didnt upload them.
2ujqh3p.jpg


2nd unit came 54% charged:
or2ja9.jpg


Same version:
5xv8g6.jpg


I registered the first unit with my amazon account just to look at stuff. Content is instantly accessible and looks good. Battery use after ~10 min of farting around and ~30 min of playing star trek was only down 9% so it seems appropriate (good)

Im getting ready to root/install CM on the 2nd / slightly scratched one right now. If all goes well I will probably open a few more tonight.
 
Installed cyanogenmod 11 no problem, just took a littler longer than expected. The damn thing recovered on me my first try and unrooted etc, had to start over.

Its a very nice tablet with CM11. Its faster/snappier than I expected it to be. The ginormous bezel is a little funky at first but I already dont notice it. The tablet feels very good and solid in my hand.

On to loading up apps, overclocking and testing stuff.
 
Picked up two at $60 each. One came in brown box, one in black box. Put CM11 on one, has shut down twice by itself so far... almost wonder if I should unroot and send it back. Other one is working great though
 
I got 3. Going to use Kindle FreeTime and give them to my kids. One of the 3 was shutting down and refusing to turn back on without plugging it in. The other two are great.
 
Found that the one that was intermittedly shutting down no longer does so after fulling charging the battery for the first time (which didn't happen until it was rooted, was too impatient ;) )... knock on wood.
Plan on doing cm11 on second one soon.
 
If Amazon hadn't raised the price this would still be a pretty good deal. I saw under $60 for a Kindle Fire HD and started thinking that they would make a good Christmas gift for a couple people in my family and I could get one for myself to mess with and up CM11 on. At the current nearly $80 for a Good quality one, Amazon can kiss my ass. Not worth it for that, and especially not worth over $80 for one listed as Acceptable. Amazon is on crack with these prices.
 
Agreed, under 60$ these are decently priced but other that not at all worth it.

I have 4 up and running, 2 with CM one totally stock and 1 with the amazon os but rooted with google apps . No bad ones yet but I guess I will see.

Im having a hard time deciding how to "give these out". (Amazon vs CM)

The Amazon fork is very limiting stock, but you can easily root it and install all the google apps etc and then kinda have the best of both worlds. The problem Im having with this currently is that its just way too easy for the unit (especially when used by a kid) for it to auto-update and break the root.

The problem Im having with CM is that alot of applications are unstable. its very... "androidish" I dont think there are any hardware problems, I have had similar problems on ALL android devices especially when running custom roms. You find what works and what doesnt, stay selective of what you run and eventually find a good setup. The device is very smooth with a fresh reboot but gets quite sluggish after you have opened 20 things. I dont know if its android or CM or the unit or what but it just doesnt seem to be very good at managing memory and/or closing applications.

For someone that knows how to deal with an android device this is not a problem, but this is not at all good for kids or inexperienced people. I can see the writing on the wall.. I either sell or give these to friends/family members and they are going to be unhappy when 20-30% of the games they download freeze up 1/2 the time or just plain dont work.

Amazon has kinda gone 1/2 the apple way.. they limit whats on the amazon app store largely due to filtering stuff that wont run well or at all on their devices.

As much as I hate apple in general this experience has been a bit insightful as to why they lock everything down so hard and how that model really does fit consumers.

Hmmmm.
 
What I would recommend is just leaving them with the Fire OS and adding on a few apks like Youtube, etc. I didn't have to root it to add that on mine... they really are very solid little gadgets. It takes a while (mine updated about 3 times over 2 days) for them to get the latest push of the Fire OS, but it does everything I would want a small tablet for... I can browse [H], use tapatalk, mint, banking aps, etc. For me at least, they are solid machines without rooting them or flashing to CM.
 
Bosom said:
What I would recommend is just leaving them with the Fire OS and adding on a few apks like Youtube, etc. I didn't have to root it to add that on mine... they really are very solid little gadgets. It takes a while (mine updated about 3 times over 2 days) for them to get the latest push of the Fire OS, but it does everything I would want a small tablet for... I can browse [H], use tapatalk, mint, banking aps, etc. For me at least, they are solid machines without rooting them or flashing to CM.
Click to expand...
I came to this thread to basically say the same thing, Im glad to see someone with the same opinion.

The more I play with the fire OS the more I like its simplicity. You're right its not at all hard to sideload a few key things and then just use it as it is. The Carousel is so simple yet so clean and easy and obviously PERFECT for kids.

Overall I am surprisingly impressed with the native fire experience with one exception.. the silk browser is pretty lame.

Thanks everyone for all the feedback so far...
 
the issue with fire os is once you mod it with a ROM, you see just how slowwwwwwwwwwwwww Fire OS really is and how bulky and unrefined it is.

For me it was Croygen ROM for a while.
 
lol Im going back and forth here...

Now that I have played with these a ton for the last 2 weeks...

The fire OS sucks!

CM takes a bit more management but wow its like using an xbox one vs a sega genesis. A very nice tablet with CM!
 
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