Items tagged with Fire
Apple may be one of the most valuable companies in the world, but it isn't immune to problems with its products. Apple recently warned that MacBook Pro SSDs could lose data and that there were display issues with some iPhone X devices; it offered free repairs for both devices. Apple allegedly has a new issue with a man named Rocky Mohamadali claiming that his iPhone X exploded. The man claims that he was installing the iOS 12.1 update onto the device when the explosion occurred; that is the update that promised a fix for the so-called beautygate selfie issue. Mohamadali says that once the update started he plugged the iPhone X into the official Apple charger that came with the phone; it's unclear...
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Samsung caught a lot of flak for the failure surrounding the Galaxy Note 7. Samsung vowed to restore confidence in its brand after the Note 7 was recalled and thought to be fixed only to suffer from the same battery overheating and fire issues eventually having to be recalled permanently. More recently an owner of a Galaxy S9 smartphone claimed that his device overheated and caught fire burning his hands. Now another man has alleged via Reddit that his Galaxy S7 Edge has caught fire. The man claims that he had taken the device out of his pocket to take a picture when the phone froze and shut down. He claims that he tried to turn the device back on for a minute or so and was unable to do so. After...
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If you're an Amazon Prime member that has no qualms about being sucked deeper into the Amazon ecosystem, the online retail giant is running some big discounts on its first-party hardware. In fact, these are some of the biggest discounts that we've seen on Amazon hardware since this year's Prime Day(s) event. Amazon Fire TV 4K Starting off with the Fire TV 4K, Amazon regularly sells the device for $69.99, but today is selling it for a low $39.99. For that price, you get [obviously] 4K support along with HDR. There's support for Dolby Atmos audio, and the device is powered by a quad-core processor. You'll also find an Alexa Voice Remote in the box to make it easier to search for content. If...
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A man from Odessa, Florida claims that his girlfriend's Samsung Galaxy S9 smartphone started smoking and caught fire. Dave Warden III says the pair were wrapping up dinner when he noticed the Galaxy S9 starting to smoke on the kitchen counter. "There was popping, cracking, tingling," said Warden. He says soon after the smoke started 12-inch flames began to spew out of the smartphone. He attempted to pick up the phone and throw it into the sink but missed the sink tossing the phone onto the floor instead. The man claims that his hands were burned while trying to move the phone. "It burned for so long that we actually had enough time to grab my phone and actually get video of it...
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Back in mid-September, Amazon dove into uncharted pricing territory with a $50 Fire tablet. Given its $50 price tag, specs are decidedly on the low-end of the spectrum with a 1.3GHz quad-core processor, 1GB RAM, 1024x600 IPS display, 8GB of internal storage and a microSD slot. At the time, the Fire was only available in black, but Amazon is now sprucing up the color palette with three new colors: magenta, blue, and tangerine. The new color options of course don’t drive the price up, but those who want to double their onboard storage have a new option to select. Amazon will sell you a Kindle Fire with 16GB of internal storage for $69.99, which is actually a pretty good deal when you think about...
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Amazon’s current generation of Fire tablets offer something for everyone, from the budget-conscious user who wants a super-cheap $50 tablet, to the consumer who’s willing to spend more in exchange for a larger format device with all the bells and whistles. Today, we’re going to take a look at Amazon’s Fire HD 10 tablet which finds itself at the top of Amazon’s current slate offerings but for a very reasonable price for a 10-inch device. Amazon designed the Fire HD 10 with entertainment in mind. The tablet features a 10.1-inch wide aspect HD display that supports a resolution of 1280x800 with a density of 149ppi. This display features a 16:10 aspect ratio that gives you 22 percent more horizontal...
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Periodically, Amazon updates and revamps its lineup of tablets with upgraded models and new names. While the company's tablets have kept the Fire branding over the years, the combination of letters and numbers that follow have changed. This year, for example, Amazon removed the HDX tag and now offers tablets with simply “Fire” or “Fire HD” branding. As its simpler name may suggest, Amazon’s latest Fire tablet is a more basic model that doesn’t have all of the bells and whistles of the HD series, which is available in three sizes. Instead, the all-new 7-inch Fire tablet has an ultra-low $50 price tag that has the potential to shake up the market and get a tablet in the hands of people who might...
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Minecraft is a hugely popular game around the globe, and Microsoft was wise to snatch up its creator, Mojang AB, for $2.5 billion last year. Given its popularity, it’s not uncommon to see Minecraft gamers live stream their digital exploits for all to see. What is uncommon, however, is to see such a mundane activity disintegrate into utter chaos and mayhem in a matter of minutes. A 40-year-old Japanese gamer, who goes by the name Daasuke, decided to step away from his mouse and keyboard during a Minecraft streaming session for a smoke break. Instead of using a simple book of matches to light his cigarette, Daasuke instead tried giving some camera time to his fancy new oil match lighter. During...
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Once upon a time, Amazon was an online e-tailer. Now, the company has become a full-on technology maker, with loads of hardware and software to speak of. There's the Kindle, Fire TV, Fire TV Stick, Fire tablet range, Fire Phone, Amazon Appstore, and plenty more. The company is continuing its foray into the hardware realm with the release of Echo, which is a voice-controlled speaker that not only supports streaming music, but also order commands for items on Amazon. It's black, sleek, and quite impressive. Design-wise, it does a lot of things right. On the functionality side, it provides information, music, news, weather and more, and it's completely controlled by one's voice. Supposedly, it's...
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Bold. That’s the word that comes to mind when we consider Amazon’s Fire Phone. In a world where precious little has happened in the smartphone space over the past few years, at least in terms of groundbreaking innovation, Amazon’s entrance provides all the spark you need to sit up and pay attention. So what’s Amazon, predominantly an online e-tailer, doing jumping into this Lion's den of a market space? The Fire Phone is the company’s first foray into the cutthroat world of handsets, but it’s far from its first rodeo in mobile hardware. The company has seen terrific success in the e-reader world with its famed Kindle line, and it has even garnered mainstream...
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Bold. That’s the word that comes to mind when we consider Amazon’s Fire Phone. In a world where precious little has happened in the smartphone space over the past few years, at least in terms of groundbreaking innovation, Amazon’s entrance provides all the spark you need to sit up and pay attention. These days, a major OEM doesn’t just enter the smartphone space. Apple and Samsung have dominated market share and profits for years, squeezing BlackBerry out almost entirely and putting HTC on life support. Nokia, meanwhile, is stutter-stepping as Microsoft begins a massive series of layoffs that’ll no doubt impact the future of Lumia going forward. So what’s Amazon,...
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Amazon’s Fire smartphone is receiving a software update this week, and it’s bringing several new features and improvements that customers are sure to welcome. At the top of that list: improved battery life. The fix is the results of multiple tweaks to Fire OS to improve battery conservation. Another important feature is Quick Switch, which is something that most smartphones already support in one way or another. Quick Switch lets you swap running apps by double-pressing the Home button. You can use the feature to stop running apps, too, which is handy. The Fire smartphone, running Amazon Maps. Other features include support for sharing videos via MMS and email and a lenticular photo...
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If there was one word to describe Amazon, it would be “disruptive”. The company has been dominant in the online retail market, but it has also pushed into other services such as video streaming with Amazon Prime, tablets, and even drones. Amazon’s recently-announced Fire smartphone is an intriguing a product within a given market that the company has ever produced. Its hardware is high-end enough, with a quad-core Snapdragon chip and a 4.7-inch (1280x720) display with a 13MP camera around back, but it’s the four front cameras, Firefly button, and services such as Mayday, ASAP, X-Ray, and more that set the smartphone apart from the field. We’ve already discussed these...
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Battery issues aren't as common as they once were, but every so often, there's still a model that pops up as being a potential threat to human safety. Slight exaggerations aside, Sony has just announced that some 26,000 of its newest Vaio machines posed a fire risk. The batteries are built by Panasonic, and Sony believes that they could "overheat and catch fire." Because of that, Sony's requesting that users of its Vaio Fit 11A laptop stop computing on them as soon as possible. Presently, Sony has only received three reports of overheating batteries, but here's the kicker: they've caused "partial burns" to the laptops involved. The first report came on March 19th, with two more following on March...
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There's an old saying that essentially advises you not to buy much of anything that you can't afford to pay for immediately. Granted, that's tough to implement on things like homes and vehicles, but on tablets? Seems like pretty sage advice. Nevertheless, Amazon is taking advantage of the world's appetite for cheap credit, and it could be looking to boost those essential year-end numbers by moving more of its hardware than it would otherwise. The Kindle Fire HDX is a solid tablet in its own right, but it's still not "cheap" by most definitions. In order to combat that, Amazon's offering you the ability to pick one up, and then give you nine months to pay it off. The $229 7" HDX and the $379 8.9"...
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A Reddit forum user is claiming that his Samsung Galaxy S III smartphone overheated and caught on fire in the wee hours of the morning, burning a hole in his mattress and filling his two-story home with the foul stench of burning plastic and electronics. It was a "loud noise and a weird squeaking sound" that originally awoke Reddit user "vizionx1208" from his slumber only to find that his smartphone was toasting itself. "I jumped out of bed and turned the light on, only to see that my phone was just beginning to go on fire," vizionz1280 explains. "I dumped a glass of water I had in the room on it to stop it from burning...then woke up my brother to come help. The smoke smelled so bad and wafted...
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Amazon's Kindle line has been tearing it up, or so we're led to believe. The company still has yet to reveal hard sales figures, but it's pretty clear from the expansion that things are doing well enough to support the standalone business. Now, the company has said that Voice Guide and Explore By Touch features are slated to land on Kindle Fire and Kindle Fire HD 7" by early next year, giving users another reason to snag one for Christmas and await a surprise shortly after. For years features such as text-to-speech and adjustable font sizes have helped vision-impaired Kindle owners enjoy books more easily and those with learning disabilities to improve their reading skills. Now, two new accessibility...
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With the Samsung Galaxy Nexus 7 turning heads and talk of an Apple iPad mini starting to look like more than the usual rumor mill grist, it's not surprising to hear of an imminent Kindle Fire refresh. A new 7-inch tablet may appear July 31st. Launched in November, the Kindle Fire is ripe for new hardware. For one thing, its dual-core processor is about to take a beating from the quad-core processors appearing in competing 7-inch tablets. (The Nexus 7 has a quad-core Tegra 3 CPU.) Another issue is the Kindle Fire's lack of a camera. Amazon's consumption vs. production philosophy may be tested by similarly-sized tablets that let you Skype and iChat. On the OS side, the Kindle fire is facing off...
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Every now and then, Amazon claims to have the best season ever. Oh, it's the holidays! Just like clockwork, Amazon is celebrating a post-Christmas success, with 2011 being the 'best holiday ever for Kindle.' The company oday announced that 2011 was the best holiday ever for the Kindle family as customers purchased millions of Kindle Fires and millions of Kindle e-readers. Authors also continue to benefit from the success of Kindle - the #1 and #4 best-selling Kindle books released in 2011 were both published independently by their authors using Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP). "We are grateful to our customers worldwide for making this the best holiday ever for Kindle," said Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com...
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In this latest episode of HotHardware's Two and Half Geeks, Marco, Iyaz and Dave discuss the Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime with NVIDIA's Tegra 3 SoC, OCZ's Octane Series SATA III Solid State Drive, Amazon's Kindle Fire tablet and how not to get burned, NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 560 Ti 448-Core Limited Edition graphics card, and details of the HotHardware Gear-Up Giveaway with MSI and NVIDIA give away... Show Notes: 00:41 - Iyaz cries. 01:30 - Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime, Tegra 3 Unleashed 07:53 - OCZ Octane Series SATA III Solid State Drive Review 11:17 - Amazon Kindle Fire: Insight and How Not To Get Burned 17:15 - NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti 448-Core GPU Review 20:25 - MSI and...
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Nook Tablet? "Bring it on," says the Kindle Fire. Amazon's first tablet is getting pumped up with a slew of notable apps, and as we've seen with the iPad, it's the apps that make or break a product. Facebook, Pandora, Netflix, Rhapsody and games from EA, Zynga and Rovio will be hitting the Kindle Fire next week, along with "several thousand more apps." Just like with movies and TV shows, music, books, and magazines, Kindle Fire offers a fully-integrated Android apps and games experience - purchase or register for an app or game once, enjoy it on your Kindle Fire and other Android-based devices - and all apps and games are backed up in the Amazon Cloud for re-download anytime. The Weather Channel...
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Amazon has just officially takes the wraps off the Kindle Fire, a new Android-based, relatively low-cost tablet, that’s poised to make some waves this holiday season. The Kindle Fire is a 7” tablet with a screen resolution of 1024 x 600 that runs Android 2.3. The display uses IPS technology and features an anti-glare coating, which should help make it somewhat more readable outdoors than untreated screens. There is also a dual-core CPU at the heart of the Kindle Fire, but the exact model has not been disclosed just yet—rumor has it, a TI OMAP 4 powers the device. There is 8GB of storage on-board, 512MB of RAM, Wi-Fi, and Amazon claims up to 8 hours of battery life during...
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