god I wish we had a modern Nexus 7, there's like no good 7-8" android tablets
this post was submitted on 19 Mar 2025
36 points (86.0% liked)
Technology
66975 readers
4103 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
I was so sad when my Nexus 7 gave up the ghost (quite literally fizzled and nothing more) but I got a solid 10 years out of it.
I loved how easy they were to work on, the NFC, the unlockable bootloader, the ROM support, headphone jack of course. We didn't know how good we had it then.
y700
Most phones are that now! To be honest, I say this with three tablets in mt house - I cant believe there is much market for these at all.
No one should buy either of them IMO. These super cheap mobile devices are more or less e-waste from day one...
Can they be flashed with Linux?
Please, just don't. At least unless there's a reasonably not shady ROM on XDA that you feel comfortable flashing.
I'm reading this on my 8" Onn right now .. (I normally use a fold but my screen finally failed, and I like having a large screen for reading, be it books, manga/manhwa, or Lemmy). I used to be into flashing a while back but I haven't bothered recently. I agree it's a good idea, but it's low on my current list of stuff I need to get done. (Like moving from Windows to Linux on my main pc).
Edit I do have the Amazon one also, but explaining why I bought the Onn when I already have a Fire HD 8 is just going to make me look worse...
I recently bought cheap refurbished 10" Amazon Fire specifically for web browsing. The author is spot on when he says it's "obnoxious to the point of hostility."
Amazon places a huge "Register now" nag across the launcher that can't be removed without registering, and even the calculator won't work until you do. Wigets aren't supported by Amazon's launcher and it is impossible to load an alternative. There are a host of other deliberate annoyances Amazon has created to make sure the tablet is used for their purpose rather than your own.
It was only $35, but it's not worth even that much. Amazon has truly made enshittification an art form.
There are a host of other deliberate annoyances Amazon has created to make sure the tablet is used for their purpose rather than your own.
Do you have some examples? Sounds both horrible and interesting.
I've always thought the fact that the LockScreen is just one massive advert tells you everything you need to know about fire tablets!
Battle of who do you want to give all your usage data to so they spam you with ads?
There's a reason why they're cheap, never used Walmart ones but the Amazon tablets required extra fees just to not be a permanent billboard on the lock screen.
And it’s a piece of shit. The only thing the Amazon fire tablets ever did well was shop Amazon. And I stopped shopping on Amazon years ago. These are a waste of money at any price
I played KOTOR on a fire tablet back when they had the Amazon Underground app store and it worked alright, after underground the only apps that worked worth anything were the amazon bundle of shop/kindle/Alexa/etc.
My last one I gave to a friend (she uses it exclusively as a kindle) after Amazon ended watch party on video and I ended my subscription.
Eh, they're pretty good for kids IMO. Put some restrictions on them so they can only use them for a certain amount of time, and they feel happy that they have their own device without monopolizing/breaking your nicer ones.
Is it possible to remove the amazon OS, install Linux/Android and get rid of the bloatware or is it OS locked like iPads etc.?
We don’t have Amazon in my country so I’ve never seen those tablets.
I don’t know, I doubt it. It’s actually an older android os that has been modified by Amazon, so I don’t think you can get around it. You used to be able to jailbreak them and use google play store, but I don’t think that’s possible anymore
Sometime around 2019-ish they locked them down hard and it's not possible to jailbreak them and put custom firmware on it, however I'm pretty sure you can still put the play store on it, I've side loaded it on my 2021 model but it's still awful because of Amazon.
Old Amazon Kindle was amazing, I read tons of books on it. New Kindle was so clunky to get books on it, set up different accounts, constantly suspicious you were up to something. A totally non-intuitive piece of shit. Amazon design has all the charm of their warehouses.
Are there dirt cheap versions on amazon (but not made by Amazon) i can use?