Kindle Fire Drawbacks

As with every other tablet device on the market there are certain advantages and disadvantages to owning the new Amazon Kindle Fire. However, depending on your requirements what are disadvantages to some are advantages to others.

Amazon has created the Kindle Fire specifically to monetize their vast library of movies, TV shows, music, apps and of course eBooks. They even sell the Kindle Fire at a loss because they believe that in the long run they will make much more when people sign up to their Amazon Prime service or when they buy content on a pay as you go basis.

For this reason they have made the Kindle Fire a very closed device which is superb at accessing Amazon’s content but largely useless for anything else – Amazon has even blocked off the Android Marketplace so you have to go to the Kindle Store to download all your apps (although you will find all the most popular apps are available).

By tying the Kindle Fire to Amazon’s cloud it creates another drawback because any music or media that you buy will include DRM which locks you in and you can only consume the media on the Kindle Fire.

Because the device is a consumption only device designed to be a way to access Amazon’s media then many hardware features are missing like a camera, microphone, accelerometer, GPS, bluetooth and 3G. This means that the Kindle becomes yet another device to carry around because it can’t do all that a smartphone can do and nor can it be used in the same way you might use a $500 tablet. The lack of connectivity also means you have to rely on Amazon’s cloud services to get content on to your device.

Talking of being a media only device, many early adopters have lamented the lack of physical buttons on the case. To some this is an advantage because it means you don’t accidently knock the screen lock or menu button while on the final level of Angry Birds, but for others it’s irritating because you can’t instantly control the volume of the music or movie you are watching.

To change the volume you need to use the virtual controls which takes a bit longer to adjust. It’s not a major gripe but even Apple realized with their 2nd generation iPod Touch that people still want physical controls.

If you plan to let your kids use the Kindle Fire then one disadvantage you will run in to is the one click purchases of apps or digital media. While it’s a very convenient and easy way for most people to buy apps there is always the chance that you accidently touch the tablet and initiate the download and similarly if you have any children they might think they are just playing around but actually are buying and downloading apps, movies and music like there is no tomorrow!

Many people have already mentioned how they have inadvertently purchased something because of the one click purchase feature so hopefully it will be something Amazon addresses in a future software update.

There are some other small usability drawbacks which people have commented on but for those who purchased Kindle Fire specifically for consuming media the reviews have been excellent from both the users and from the technology blogs and magazines.