A fork in the road

Five years ago, Amazon and Google were partners. Amazon’s music service came pre-loaded on the T-Mobile G1, the first Android phone ever, and the plan was simple: marry Amazon’s unparalleled wealth of content with Google’s software design, and together take over the world.

In hindsight, it might have worked. Amazon’s library of music, movies, TV shows, books, and everything you could ever want to buy is bigger and more accessible than ever, and Android has evolved into a truly great operating system. But Google and Amazon have become competitors, each after a slice of the huge tablet market — so Google’s worked to turn the Play Store into a force to be reckoned with, and Amazon’s taken the core of Android and forked it into an alternate version that tries to do just as much.

Fire OS is more subdued than Android, and much more media-focused

Fire OS 3.0, codenamed "Mojito," is Amazon’s latest software effort. It’s not the flexible, versatile, platform Android has become, and still feels very much media-centric. The top navigation is just a list of ways to give Amazon your money: Shop, Games, Videos, Audiobooks, Newsstand, and more. The homescreen is still a reverse-chronological carousel of every book, app, and movie you’ve opened or purchased since the beginning of time. Mojito does offer a new grid view of your apps, which makes life easier — before, if you didn’t open Hulu for a week, it wound up buried in the carousel behind all the other things Amazon really thinks you should be buying and watching instead.

The dark white-and-gray-on-gray aesthetic is much more subdued than the bright, vibrant colors of Android, and the swipeable multitasking menu is more akin to iOS, but from the notification pulldown to the settings menus Fire OS won’t feel unfamiliar to most users.

Version 3.0 comes with a lot of non-obvious improvements, particularly for business users — with new security features and IT-friendly maintenance tools, the HDX is the most enterprise-friendly Kindle ever. The Silk browser has been subtly improved, though it remains cluttered and clunky next to Chrome or Safari.

Much more obvious is the new, overhauled email app, which finally supports conversations, labeling, and archiving of emails. It’s not as good as the standard Gmail app, with a little more interface chrome and a few unnecessarily hidden features, but it’s one of the better stock email apps I’ve used. The calendar and document-editing suite feel brand new too — the Kindle Fire has never been for getting things done, but it’s surprisingly productive now. The improvements go a long way toward turning the HDX into something other than a 7-inch combination of television and ebook reader.

But make no mistake: it’s still mostly a 7-inch combination of television and ebook reader. A remarkable one, at that, with a swath of content that continues to amaze me. The reading experience is as versatile as ever, with plenty of fonts, background colors, and margin widths to tweak to your liking. (Having a gorgeous, high-res screen makes for great reading, too.) And if you’re a Prime member, the HDX comes with the largest movie library you’ve ever imagined, all available for streaming and, for the first time, downloading. You can download any movie or show and watch it offline, which is a frequent flyer’s dream — I spend $20 or so every time I fly just buying movies and shows to watch on the plane, and I’m pretty sure the HDX will pay for itself by the time I finish watching The West Wing on cross-country flights. With loud, high-quality speakers and its terrific display, the HDX makes a great mini TV too.