Refreshed Amazon Fire 7 tablet gets faster CPU, more RAM, longer battery life and USB-C

Shawn Knight

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What just happened? Amazon has refreshed its Fire 7 tablet with a faster processor, more memory and longer battery life. The e-commerce giant said its new Fire 7 packs an upgraded quad-core processor that's 30 percent faster than its predecessor. The 7-inch slate also ships with 2GB of RAM – twice as much as before – and is rated for up to 10 hours of runtime, which Amazon says is a 40 percent improvement.

Amazon's newest Fire 7 trades out the micro-USB port for a USB-C port and comes with a 5W charger in the box. Front and rear 2MP cameras handle photography duties and video calls, but don't expect much in terms of quality from the lowly shooters.

Alexa also comes standard on new Fire 7 tablets, allowing users to perform various tasks using simple voice commands. Other notable features include a 3.5mm audio jack and a microSD card slot that supports cards up to 1TB in capacity.

Amazon's revised Fire 7 is available to pre-order from today starting at $59.99 for the lockscreen ad-supported version with 16GB of storage in your choice of black, blue or pink. Ad-free models start at $74.99 and if you want to double the local storage to 32GB, expect to shell out a minimum of $79.99 (or $94.99 for the ad-free variant). All models will be released on June 29, 2022.

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Just beware of any Amazon tablet. The quality is there, but it's likely you won't be able to run a lot of your favorite apps. In exchange for the low price, you give up the Google Play Store and can only get apps from Amazons store. And it is extremely limited.

And don't worry much about the ad supported models. The ads are only on the unlock screens.
 
Just beware of any Amazon tablet. The quality is there, but it's likely you won't be able to run a lot of your favorite apps. In exchange for the low price, you give up the Google Play Store and can only get apps from Amazons store. And it is extremely limited.

And don't worry much about the ad supported models. The ads are only on the unlock screens.
just root the device. We're on a tech site, it's not like I'm talking to soccer moms
 
I work at Amazon and we use Fire tablets at work. Boy they s*ck b*lls. If you consider buying one please do it only if you plan on installing Google services and removing all of the Amazon garbage.

Only in this scenario they are a decent value, or if you need something as cheap as possible to give your kids to trash around.

Also, never buy it full price, they are discounted like 5 times a year like all of Amazon's hardware, wait two months and you'll get it half price.
 
just root the device. We're on a tech site, it's not like I'm talking to soccer moms
Last I heard, Techspot gets 5 million hits every month. It seems likely to me that a lot of people would benefit from knowing what I posted and in fact I would bet a lot of them are soccer moms. And I can all but guarantee that many won't know what it means to root the tablet, let alone care. That is my motivation.

What is your motivation for whining like a 5-year-old getting his hair pulled in the sandbox?
 
Just beware of any Amazon tablet. The quality is there, but it's likely you won't be able to run a lot of your favorite apps. In exchange for the low price, you give up the Google Play Store and can only get apps from Amazons store. And it is extremely limited.

And don't worry much about the ad supported models. The ads are only on the unlock screens.

Just install the google store apks ... works fine.
 
Last I heard, Techspot gets 5 million hits every month. It seems likely to me that a lot of people would benefit from knowing what I posted and in fact I would bet a lot of them are soccer moms. And I can all but guarantee that many won't know what it means to root the tablet, let alone care. That is my motivation.

What is your motivation for whining like a 5-year-old getting his hair pulled in the sandbox?

you do not have to root anything .. download 3 apps. install them. hardest part would be turning off the block for denying non-amazon/non-store apps. but any kid can do that for mom in like 6 clicks.
 
Last I heard, Techspot gets 5 million hits every month. It seems likely to me that a lot of people would benefit from knowing what I posted and in fact I would bet a lot of them are soccer moms. And I can all but guarantee that many won't know what it means to root the tablet, let alone care. That is my motivation.

What is your motivation for whining like a 5-year-old getting his hair pulled in the sandbox?
well if the other kids didn't knock over my sandcastle I wouldn't be whining yet here we are.

in all seriousness, are we not in the information age? Aside from boomers, who are quickly disappearing, who doesn't have a basic level of tech knowledge at this point?
 
you do not have to root anything .. download 3 apps. install them. hardest part would be turning off the block for denying non-amazon/non-store apps. but any kid can do that for mom in like 6 clicks.
Ok, but adults are not kids. I have no doubt a lot of kids can, but younger kids aren't the ones buying for the most part. I'm sure getting past it is not a problem among the nerd set, but how many nerds are buying Amazon tablets?
And I wonder how many bought one of them that even cares about getting past the download restriction.

And I just want to mention I don't have an Amazon tablet, I have a Samsung.

Again. All I was shooting for was an FYI.
 
Amazon makes some of the best cheap devices around.

Taking into consideration that the screen is garbage on sunlight and could be bigger (with smaller bezels) ... cheap is cheap. I can only recommend indoors, some light web browsing or audio books.
 
The 8“ versions are a much better size ratio. I always thought they should just abandon this 7" lineup.
I have the 7" and use it almost exclusively as an eReader and faster would help me. My biggest challenge is from power up to being able to use the library tab can be 2+ minutes (since I have @ 2500 books). I probably need to unload those I'm not going to read again....
Yeah, I'm spoiled. I remember the 90's where you turned your computer on, got a cup of coffee, ate a donut, got your 2nd cup, and by then the PC *might* be ready to use. :)
 
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