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Android Community Weekly: October 28th, 2012

By Craig Lloyd
on 28 Oct, 2012

Another week has gone by, and it went by quickly, but that doesn't mean that nothing crazy happened. It was a big week for Android news; more rumors of the next Nexus device made their way around, and Google's major Android event scheduled for tomorrow was suddenly cancelled due to Hurricane Sandy. Read on for more of this past week's best Android news.

Amazon calls Kindle Fire HD a “best-seller” and announces a new OTA update to celebrate

By Dave LeClair
on 23 Oct, 2012

Amazon has recently described the Kindle Fire HD as the "#1 best-selling product across all of Amazon worldwide." That's some pretty serious sales if accurate. Of course, since Amazon almost never releases actual sales figures when they talk about products a little skepticism is needed. Maybe it is the best-selling thing on Amazon ever, or maybe they mean it's the best-seller this week. Without numbers it's hard to be sure.

Amazon cloud outage brings Reddit, Pinterest, Netflix down

By Eric Abent
on 22 Oct, 2012

Amazon's cloud services seem to be struggling a bit today, as our friends at SlashGear are reporting that a failure has brought down a number of huge sites like Netflix, Reddit, Pinterest, and Foursquare. The outage, according to Amazon's own Web Service Dashboard, looks to be the fault of Amazon's EC2 services, but we're pleased to say that things are getting better. Whereas before, EC2's status alerted that "new launches for EBS backed instances are failing," at the moment, the status is "Degraded EBS performance in a single Availability Zone."

Amazon makes zero profit from Kindle

By Dave LeClair
on 12 Oct, 2012

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos confirmed that the Kindle nets zero profit for Amazon. Rather, they sell them at cost with the hopes of making up for it with sales of ebooks, videos, and music downloads, according to the BBC. For a while, rumors have circulated that Amazon might actually be selling Kindle and Kindle Fire's at loss. As it turns out, they are not that discounted, but in business, breaking even is not generally the goal either.

Walmart removes all Amazon Kindles from store shelves

By Craig Lloyd
on 20 Sep, 2012

Kindle products will now be in less brick-and-mortar stores starting today. In a move that would oust retail competitors like Amazon from their stores, Wal-mart has stopped selling all Amazon Kindle ereaders and tablets. No longer will you be able to try out Amazon's offerings of slates at one of the largest retail stores in the US.

Kindle Fire HD 7 can now be rooted

By Craig Lloyd
on 19 Sep, 2012

We reported a couple days ago that Amazon locked down the new Kindle Fire HD tablets pretty tightly, making it more difficult to find a workaround for a successful root. However, good news has arrived and it looks like a successful workaround has been established, thanks to some hard-working folks.

New Kindle Fire devices are locked up tight, root methods may be difficult

By Craig Lloyd
on 17 Sep, 2012

Last week, Amazon announced a slew of new Kindle devices, including the all new Ice Cream Sandwich-equipped Kindle Fire HD. A lot of folks are really excited to get their hands on one, but developers and rooters alike may not be too happy when they set their eyes on the new device. It turns out that Amazon locked up the bootloaders of their 2nd-generation Kindle Fires using the same techniques that are used on most "high-security" devices.

Android Community Weekly: September 9th, 2012

By Cory Gunther
on 9 Sep, 2012

It was a smartphone and tablet packed week here in the world of Android Community and we aren't quite sure where to start. These are the kind of weeks that most Android fans truly enjoy. From Motorola unloading a new entourage of smartphones for Verizon, Amazon doing the same for tablets, and plenty of leaks so lets dive in.

Amazon Kindle Fire HD vs Google Nexus 7

By Cory Gunther
on 7 Sep, 2012

Yesterday Amazon announced their new Kindle Fire HD tablets, and while the 8.9-inch model might have stolen the show it's their smaller 7-inch model that could be the big hit. Amazon's new 7-inch Kindle Fire HD packs a pretty impressive spec sheet and a great price to match it. But is that enough for it to rival the Nexus 7?

Kindle Fire HD tablets will be ad supported – but optional

By Cory Gunther
on 7 Sep, 2012

A lot of talk has appeared over the past 24 hours regarding Amazon's new Kindle Fire HD tablets being ad supported or "subsidized" with special offers appearing on the lockscreen and homescreen, but lets clear some of the rumors up. Since we were there live we can agree that yes these were indeed included, but Amazon has confirmed they'll be optional.