iFixit gives Kindle Fire HD a repairability score of 7 out of 10

Shawn Knight

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Amazon’s just-released Kindle Fire HD has already found its way to the prying fingers of the gang at iFixit for a complete teardown. The repair specialists give Amazon’s new flagship a repairability score of 7 out of 10 - the higher the score, the easier it is to repair. In comparison, Apple’s new iPad scored 2 out of 10 on the same scale.

A plastic opening tool is all that’s needed to get inside the Kindle Fire HD. Once in, the team found hardware from an array of manufacturers including Texas Instruments, Broadcom, Elpida and Samsung.

ifixit kindle fire amazon kindle fire hd

They did discover that the front panel glass and the LCD screen have been fused together. This means you will have to replace the full assembly as one unit rather than two entities. Amazon touched on this during their media event, highlighting the fact that laminating the touch insert on top of the display resulted in 25 percent less glare.

We also learned that the battery in the Kindle Fire HD is 4400mAh, just slightly larger than the 4326mAh unit inside Google’s Nexus 7 tablet. This is interesting as Amazon says the tablet will run for 11 hours; that’s about two hours longer than the Nexus 7 when watching HD video and one hour more when surfing the web.

Overall, the Kindle Fire HD scored highly based on its easy-to-open case, a simplistic design, a common set of screws (Phillips #00) and the fact that the battery isn’t held in place with adhesive. Some points were lost, however, due to the somewhat difficult to remove copper tape covering the processor and the fused LCD / glass panel.

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Repairing our device and upgrading our batteries? What is this 1999? Apple has us believe all the rage is just throwing them in the trash and buying new ones. Well played Amazon, well played.
 
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