Amazon’s Fire tablets use Android, but Amazon has heavily customized and restricted the system. This is how you free the tablets from their shackles.
With its Fire tablets, Amazon offers good mid-range devices for a low price. The tablets are particularly popular on promotional days such as Prime Day or Black Friday – then Amazon offers them with discounts of 50 percent and more. In July 2022, for example, the Fire HD 8 was available for around 40 euros.
Although the tablets cannot keep up with the high-end competition in terms of performance, they are sufficient for streaming and surfing. The only disadvantage is the operating system: Android is under the hood, but Amazon has severely restricted it, provided it with its own app store and blocked central Google services such as the calendar. Fortunately, there are enough resourceful developers and hobbyists who have managed to eliminate numerous changes from Amazon. For example, the Google Play Store can be installed or the Amazon Launcher can be replaced. Even the advertising can be deactivated.
We’ll show you how to remove apps you don’t need, install alternative software, and stop updates from Amazon.
