Sept. 28, 2011: The Kindle Fire is shown at a news conference in New York. The e-reader and tablet has a 7-inch multicolor touchscreen and sells for $199. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)
Kindle Fire owners frustrated with the device's many software flaws, should receive some relief in the next few weeks. Amazon is expected to release an over-the-air update for the tablet that will reportedly improve its much maligned interface and web browsing speeds, according to The New York Times.
Last month, Laptopmag.com reported that the Fire's Silk web browser, which is partially powered by Amazon's EC2 cloud computing cluster, was 25 percent slower when its web acceleration feature was turned on. Now it appears as though Amazon is indirectly copping to that fact through its impending update.
Also expected to be addressed through the update are the Fire's privacy issues. The tablet currently displays the last website you visited on its homescreen, giving other users easy accesses to your surfing habits.
Even more concerning is the fact that users do not have to log in to Amazon's media stores to purchase music, movies, books, or apps. As a result, a user's child could pick up the device and order hundreds of dollars worth of content without having to enter a confirmation code. And while there have been no reports of this in the media, the fact that it could happen is alarming enough for consumers to take notice.
According to the Times' report, the update, which is expected to go out in the next two to three weeks (just in time for the holidays), will improve the responsiveness of the Fire's user interface, speed up webpage load times, and allow users to edit their list of recently viewed items.
If you'd rather not wait two weeks for the update, Laptopmag.com have complete instructions for hiding your your browsing habits and disabling the Fire's web acceleration, which our tests have shown improves webpage load times. If Amazon manages to make the needed improvements that users are seeking, it may be able to salvage the Fire's image. If not, the tablet's problems could become an albatross around the company's neck.
* Kindle Fire's Silk Browser 25 Percent Slower with Cloud Acceleration On
* How to Disable Web Browser Acceleration in the Kindle Fire
* How to Hide Your Surfing Habits on the Kindle Fire
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