Here’s my status update on why I love the new Fire HD 8+ that I just wrote on Facebook:
I upgraded my HD Fire 8 Plus tablet to the newest release, and I am seeing less and less use case for the 10-in except watching movies in bed… and I already have a new TV that came equipped with Roku and a FireStick 4K (for Zac now), plus a FireStick Lite on the living room TV. I have a feeling I’ll either like the 10 again when they upgrade it to the same version of Android that the new 8+ has, or I won’t. The smaller form factor makes all the difference, especially when texting on the screen. If they could manage to put their top of the line hardware into the 7-in Fire, I’d be a convert to that. The iPad mini is the last time I’ve had this much fun with a tablet, because there are so many creature comforts in native Android that FireOS has incorporated, like Dark Theme. I wish I didn’t have to hack it, though. I wish that you could get every piece of software in the Google Play store natively, because they don’t even have the most popular password managers (the problem being that most apps on Android require Google Services Framework). It’s too frustrating to have used Android before and had to hack my way around all it’s pretty huge annoyances. Luckily, XDA has done all my work for me. With the 8-in form factor and 3GB of RAM, the bottom line is that the extra gig on the 10 is missed, but not enough to take away the joy from not having to carry a Bluetooth keyboard if I don’t want to lug it. It’s also lighter and thinner than the old one. I am an Android person. I have an iPad Pro 10.5 that supports an Apple pencil and all that jazz that an Apple person gave me. I haven’t used it in two years.
In that moment, I was right, and I was wrong. The extra gig of RAM allows me to do serious work, like having a web browser, an e-mail client, and an office suite open at the same time. It’s got extra power, and I use it like a laptop. I just can’t use it like a tablet. Too clunky to type, even though video calls are better. But we’ll see. I might do a test vlog and see if the camera is capable of capturing me without me having to hold it. That would be a nice thing.
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