Look and Feel

To be clear, the software experience of the Fire isn't wholly disconnected compared to other Android tablets or phones. You still have some of the basic pieces of the OS in place here, but others have been removed or heavily altered. Things that will seem familiar to Android users include the keyboard, (which has been reskinned, though works and sounds like a standard Gingerbread keyboard), the window shade notification area (though now it's a tap instead of swipe down), and many of the submenus and settings screens.

There are huge changes elsewhere, however. For starters, there aren't "home screens" or "widgets" here. Instead, Amazon offers a virtual bookshelf that has two specific places for your content. The upper level is a Cover Flow-style swipeable list which shows you your most recently used items (across music, books, magazines, apps, and more). The lower level is a user-programmable list which allows you to place your favorite selections into an organized grid. You can rearrange these icons much like you do on the homescreen of the iPad (they automatically reshuffle), and the list grows downward as you add more items. This is for all intents and purposes your new homescreen — and it works rather well. Along the top of your homescreen is a list of your content silos: Newsstand, Books, Music, Video, Docs, Apps, and Web, as well as a search box that lets you peer into your library or jump to a web search. It makes getting to your stuff quick and easy, and also blends well with the store options Amazon provides.

One thing I would like to see on the Fire is a way to do a unified search of all content available on the individual stores as well as your library. Right now each piece is broken off, and it would be really helpful to jump right into a content search from that persistent search box.

The software experience of the Fire isn't wholly disconnected compared to other Android tablets or phones

For ease of use and simplicity, the general concepts get high marks from me, though I do think some tweaking is required. One of the more annoying aspects of this screen is the sensitivity of the swiping area. It's actually quite difficult to get the item you want to focus and stay still, and often a tap doesn't register on those items. Furthermore, you can't remove unwanted items from the list, so if you've visited a webpage or opened an app that you no longer want at the top of the list, you just have to wait for it to shuffle off of the front page of your device.

The pinning area below is a nice idea, though I don't see how it differs much from a homescreen full of icons and links to webpages (pro observation: it doesn't). I will admit to missing widgets, though there are still some Android apps you can download that will allow you to keep toggles or quick links in your window shade area.

Speaking of that area, another place Amazon has changed the OS (and improved it, in my opinion) is that the Fire offers a tap point on the right side of the status bar which drops down quick options to set volume, brightness, and other settings, as well as providing access to your currently playing music.

The Fire OS does miss a bit with its handling of the home, menu, and back buttons. Clearly these are necessary for much of the navigation of the device, but unlike Ice Cream Sandwich, which almost always keeps these items present onscreen, the Fire often hides the buttons and demands a tap to bring them back up. That can be distracting and confusing when you're trying to quickly get around the tablet. Additionally, the way they're surfaced differs depending on the application you're in. Sometimes they're brought forward by a single tap to the display, and sometimes they're buried in a weird little pull-up menu which hovers along the bottom of the screen. Most of these issues might have been solved by making the sleep / wake button a home button as well. Perhaps Amazon will provide a software update with this as an option.

Otherwise, the OS has been generally cleaned up and made whole — so every app and menu that you're in looks cohesive and feels like part of the same family. Things aren't exactly perfect, however. I did notice some weird behavior on the homescreen where data seemed to be reloading or recaching randomly; the icons would flicker out and then flicker back on unexpectedly. The navigation icons in apps (home, back, and menu) were often finicky, wouldn't accept touches, or failed to appear when I wanted them to. Additionally, the overall OS performance feels stuttery and sluggish, there are odd visual bugs, and things like the keyboard are slow to respond — going back to the iPad 2 from the Fire was a stark contrast in fit and finish. There's a lot of polish here, but I see a lot that Amazon still needs to perfect.

Email

Believe it or not, there is an email client on the Fire. The offered software is a basic but capable IMAP client. You won't find any fancy Gmail features here like archiving, conversation view, or label management, but you should be able to deal with your inbox all the same. If you're a Gmail user, you'll be happy to know that the device automatically sets up your mail as an Exchange account, thus allowing for push updates.

Thankfully, you also get multiple message management as well as the ability to view a unified inbox which aggregates multiple accounts.

Generally the email client works well — though I couldn't help but fantasize about how good the Fire would be with a native Gmail client onboard.

Books

Obviously there's book reading software on the Fire, and if you've ever used any of the company's clients for Android, iOS, or webOS, you'll have a pretty good picture of what this reader is capable of. And that's pretty standard stuff. Aside from obvious formatting and re-formatting of width, font size, and coloring, you're also able to select words or groupings of words for notation, searches, and highlighting.

For studying and note-taking, the Fire's client seems superb, though I was a little disappointed to find that the company didn't include the innovate new X-ray feature it's touting on the Kindle Touch. I was also a surprised to see slower frame rates on page turns than on iOS or Android. As the new flagship Kindle, I expected the experience to be a little more polished.

Music and video

The music and video playback aspects of the Fire are solid, but won't exactly surprise you. Both apps on the device are clean and structured, but clearly not trying to win any awards for "most innovative." I actually take that as a good thing. I want my media players to get out of the way and do their job, and that's definitely the case on Amazon's tablet.

Music is a no-frills affair which gives you options to sort your collection by what's available on just the device itself, or your full library in Amazon's cloud. One thing that's odd is that you can't see both buckets in a single view.

When playing back music, you always have a small controller and listing of what's on at the moment, and as I mention above, you get persistent controls in the dropdown navigation. I did have some issues when making playlists where my selection options would jump around and I wouldn't be able to add certain songs unless I scrolled the list of tracks up and down. It's clearly a software bug that needs working out.

Video is a similarly simple affair, though instead of starting you out in your library, it plants you in a "featured" front page of store content. That makes a lot of sense on the Fire, and at least in my case — because I'm a Prime subscriber — free content is shown in the main slot. It's a great enticement to browse around and discover new shows or movies. When you view a piece of content, you get choices to watch immediately or see purchasing options.

Playback of video was handled in an almost identical fashion to playback on the company's video player for devices and its web player. The controls for video watching float above your content, and quickly fade away when you're not interacting with the device. One interesting thing of note: you can't watch video in portrait mode at all. The Fire immediately switches to landscape when you start a video.