Kindle Fire HDX - The Saga Continues:


The annual CSUN Conference on disability has come and gone, and despite it being slightly smaller this year, I have, nonetheless, had the pleasure of attending an all-day workshop hosted by Amazon for the purpose of promoting their latest pet, Kindle Fire HDX, and since they touted the revamped Accessibility features as one of the selling points, it's fitting for me to write a review on it.

 

Firstly, all models of Kindle Fire HDX are powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 (The standard state of the art processor for all high-end android devices since October last year.) The sheer sound of snapdragon 800 induces the sense of excitement in yours truly the same way a cute anime girl such as Hatsune Miku would; anyway, moving on; HDX also features amazing HD display, 300+ ppi (Pixels per inch) which makes anime girls (or indeed, any movies) a joy to behold; okay,  seriously moving on...

 

Due to the acquisition of Ivona(a Polish company specializes in text to speech technology) in 2012, HDX is equipped with voice engines to boot: Australian English, British English, American English, (two of each, one male and one female) a Canadian French, two standard French, two German, two Italian, two Brazilian Portuguese, one Russian and two Castilian Spanish. This obviously has implications for assistive technology users, for someone with dyslexia, it means your kindle is now, multilingual, it can read books not only in different languages, but also in clearly differentiated accents. For me, it means I can now have an affordable AAC device with male adult British accent, and can go to a bar to order martini, shaken or stirred; not sure how much more attractive it would make me, but it makes the device quite sexy. Of course, Google, too, is catching up on text to speech technology, so it will be interesting to see how much longer Amazon can hold on to this advantage.

 

As an often quoted Chinese Proverb goes, the deeper the love, the harsher the reprimand; If there is one reason why Kindle Fire should die a horrible death, it is this: 1. The amazon chose to run a forked version of Android, and 2, it decided to run its own closed app store. While on their own, the decision might still make sense, but together, these decisions are a folly. Let's stop for a moment and think about what it means to run a forked Android, it means whatever improvement you make on your device is bond to be superficial, because any fundamental development of the operating system is done by google. This would still be tolerable if Amazon allows its forked version of Android to be regularly updated or allows google play to update the third party apps. None of these is happening, none of the new accessibility features could be downloaded to the old Kindle Fire HD (2012 version)...This means they made a tablet, updated it once or twice, and then left it to rot. I frankly asked them at the workshop if we are expected to purchase a new model every year, to which they replied, "We are not here to talk about that." But that is essentially what has to be done, in order for me to enjoy the new accessibility features, I have had to give my old Kindle Fire HD to my sister and buy a Kindle Fire HDX.

 

The infamous eco-system of Kindle Fire has been mentioned to death by just about every technology reviewers on earth, Running a closed app store that's essentially a rip-off of the google play also mean that your third party vendors, sometimes forget about you. A case in point, the android app Speech Assistant on google play (and my LG G Flex) is currently version 3.20, the same app on amazon app store is only, 2.72. This frequently means, less features and inferior version of the same android app; so running both Forked Android and a Closed App store severely limit the potential of the Snapdragon 800.

 

Ultimately, love it or hate it, Kindle Fire HDX comes with attractive hardware, at a affordable price, it is a flawed beauty limited by business decisions which are completely out of touch with reality and limit the potential of the snapdragon 800.

 

 

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