Hasta La Gadget!

Amazon’s Kindle line of Android-powered tablets, which sport a modified version of Google’s OS that the online book seller is developing on its own, is looking more and more like a bunch of enterprise Greeks walled up within a great wooden consumer horse. The new Fire HD and HDX tablets ship with “Mojito,” the third iteration of Fire OS, which offers a number of key enterprise-specific features.

These features include support for enterprise email; a built-in native VPN client; wireless printing; a pre-installed productivity suite compatible with Office documents; secure hardware data encryption, better authentication and secure browsing via Silk; and finally, crucial support for existing popular mobile device management services via native APIs.

Kindle’s appeal in enterprise likely began due to cost – the per-unit deployment fees associated with introducing Amazon’s inexpensive tablet across small and large groups of employees far undercuts that of the iPad, for instance. But Amazon has been doing work to help complete the picture, adding services like Whispercast, which essentially offer a free, native MDM solution for organizations that don’t already have their own in place. This Fire OS update (and 3.1, which will introduce a few of the features mentioned above shortly) means it can also easily address those who have already built an enterprise mobile device provisioning network with providers like Good, without requiring them to do any significant IT infrastructure spending.

Also new with these tablets is the Mayday Button, a new on-device tech support service that allows HDX owners to essentially press one button and have an Amazon tech advisor respond immediately, remote in and show you how to do something on your own device. The support agent actually appears in a live video window, too, so it is very much one-on-one care.

Mayday has a clear consumer focus, but it’s also potentially a terrific feature for enterprise users. It means, in short, that organizations providing their employees with HDX tablets can save on in-house IT support and training, since Amazon provides all the basic help needed to get users familiar and comfortable using their devices. It’s a basic concern, but one that causes plenty of headaches for in-house IT.

Amazon has the right recipe for BYOD success with a low-cost tablet that’s powered by a strong consumer content ecosystem, but it’s now clearly investing a lot more time and effort into building out its enterprise value proposition. These new tablets make it a little more apparent that business and education are an opportunity they’re quite consciously targeting, so it’ll be interesting to see if enterprise buyers heed that call when the go on sale shortly.

If you were counting on getting all imaginative with the firmware on a new Fire or 7-inch Fire HD, you might want to check out a recent forum post over at XDA. Written by user kinfauns with input from another XDA regular called pokey9000, it concerns evidence that — unlike the original Kindle Fire — both of these devices come with more sophisticated protection, including locked bootloaders and the use of “high security” features offered by Texas Instruments’ OMAP processors. Such discoveries probably won’t inspire the same degree of outrage as certain other locked devices, considering how Amazon is understandably focused on its own ecosystem and advertising, but they might still count as a disadvantage against the pure Android Nexus 7. The XDA thread ends with only the merest hint of hope — the potential for a workaround similar to what’s been used on the Nook Tablet — but it’s hope nonetheless.

Filed under: Tablets

Amazon’s new Kindle Fire tablets are likely to be hack-resistant originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 17 Sep 2012 07:31:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Amazon just announced the Kindle Fire HD, and we heard all kinds of magical promises: a beautiful display, super duper fast WiFi, and a host of new features. On almost every count, Amazon delivered, and at a wonderful price point.

After getting up close and personal with the 7-inch Fire HD, the first thing you notice is the display. Yes, the rumors are true. It’s gorgeous. In fact, it’s on par with a Retina display iPad. All images (whether they’re within magazines, in video, on the web, or whatever) look crisp and clear. Zoom, and zoom again. You still won’t find a noticeable level of pixelation.

We also played around with a few new features, like FreeTime, and took a look at the revamped email, Facebook and Skype apps. Facebook is usually a truly terrible experience on mobile, but with better WiFi and the improved processor, the app seems to move relatively quickly. Though, logging in and firing up the app to begin with were a bit painful.

As far as responsiveness goes, the Fire HD is incredibly snappy. Scrolling through the carousel, pinching to zoom on a webpage, and flipping pages inside a magazine is a joyous experience. The words “instant gratification” come to mind, which is a bit of a contrast to most tablets (yes, even the iPad).

Unfortunately, the promise of supernaturally fast WiFi didn’t quite come to fruition. To be fair, there are about a billion reporters here clogging up the WiFi network, but loading the TechCrunch webpage and opening Facebook took a hot second. A cold second? It took longer than I expected.

The new system uses dual-band WiFi and has two different antennae, just in case your hand happens to block one. It also uses MIMO technology, which uses the echoes (caused by objects in the world) as opportunities to listen better, and thread together the original message.

I’m not saying that the new WiFi is slow by any means — I’m simply saying that it’s not as great as Bezos made it out to be. Of course, if you buy one, you won’t be enjoying the HD Fire on a crowded WiFi network, and so results may obviously vary.

The 8.9-inch model isn’t available for our playing pleasure right now, but the 7-inch model feels great in the hand. It’s got a soft-touch rubber-ish back panel that is comfortable and offers a solid grip, though it does soak up prints a bit. The corners are a bit more rounded than they were on the original Fire and it is noticeably thinner and lighter. The backside tapers to get ever-thinner toward the edge of the device, which offers a better handle on the 7-inch tablet. It’s a much smoother backside than the sharper first-gen Fire.

The dual-stereo speakers not only sound great, but add a nice design flare to the Fire HD. They lie on each side of the device, with a plastic strip running along the backside of the tab. Kindle is branded across the plastic.

All in all, I’m highly impressed. Aside from the semi-slow WiFi (which may be forgiven once I’m on my own network come review time), this is just about everything you could ask for from a tablet, and for an incredible price.

Click to view slideshow.