Kindle Fire 2nd Generation

The Kindle Fire tablet was my first tablet I ever had. I got it on Christmas 2012 from a family member and I have kept it since.

It launched in September of 2012 at a price of $159 USD

Disassembly

The Kindle Fire is pretty darn easy to disassemble. You just need a guitar pick and some patience.

The Inside

The inside of the Kindle is pretty cluttered as most of it is occupied by the big 4400mAh Li-ion Battery. But this device lacks a SD Card Slot, Camera, Microphone, and a few other features which makes saving space for the mainboard easier

There's the right side of the mainboard. You can see the Texas Instruments OMAP4 6030B CPU alongside the 1GB LPDDR2 of RAM. The CPU is obsolete in this day of age as it is only a Dual Core 32-bit chip at 1.2Ghz with no boost support and a fairly weak PowerVR SGX540 GPU at 384Mhz. The RAM also proves a challenge now as it's only 1GB. For reference I own a Samsung Galaxy A71 5G phone with 8GB of memory.

Here is the left side of the mainboard. Underneath the foam pad is the 8GB of Storage. The metal RF Shield contains a Jorin WG7310 System in a Package. The WG7310 contains WLAN, Bluetooth, and a FM Reciever in one chip. Sadly with this device the Bluetooth and FM Reciever are disabled with only the WLAN being used.

The Software

The Kindle Fire runs a custom distrobution of Android based on Android 4.0.3 with the latest version being based on Android 4.4 which makes this device a major security hazard when used on the internet. It also doesn't support the Google Play Store, Only Amazon's own store which means app support is limited to only whatever is on the Amazon App Store.