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My old kindle has been dying slowly over the past 2 months. My [ex] g/f gave me a new Kindle Fire HD 8 Plus for Christmas in 2020. I stashed it away, never fired it up and registered it. Now that the old kindle HD8 (6th Gen) [2017] is dying after taking a beating day in, day out ... I dug up the "new" kindle.

I have had it with Kindle's Silk browser. Lots of issues, especially when playing Rumble videos, even on the new kindle. Amazon doesn't offer any alternatives to Silk browser in the Amazon App store. If I want a better browser, I needed to install Google Play on the kindle and download one of their browser offerings. That requires downloading .APK files and executing them, then restarting the kindle. After doing the research, I successfully chose the correct .APK files and installed Google Play, then I downloaded the Brave browser... Success!!!

Unfortunately the Kindle Fire 8HD Plus (10th Gen) has a 64bit ARM but executes in 32bit. That made a difference in one 64bit ARM.APK file. I had to dig to find that tidbit when the 64bit .APK failed to load. I did a little more research and downloaded the correct 32bit .APK and it executed flawlessly.

This may have been childs play for you IT gurus and android phone users ... I've never worked with .APK files before. Far less intimidating than I thought it might be. I feel like I've accomplished something this afternoon.

Next challenge, importing my bookmarks from Silk.

My old kindle has been dying slowly over the past 2 months. My [ex] g/f gave me a new Kindle Fire HD 8 Plus for Christmas in 2020. I stashed it away, never fired it up and registered it. Now that the old kindle HD8 (6th Gen) [2017] is dying after taking a beating day in, day out ... I dug up the "new" kindle. I have had it with Kindle's Silk browser. Lots of issues, especially when playing Rumble videos, even on the new kindle. Amazon doesn't offer any alternatives to Silk browser in the Amazon App store. If I want a better browser, I needed to install Google Play on the kindle and download one of their browser offerings. That requires downloading .APK files and executing them, then restarting the kindle. After doing the research, I successfully chose the correct .APK files and installed Google Play, then I downloaded the Brave browser... Success!!! Unfortunately the Kindle Fire 8HD Plus (10th Gen) has a 64bit ARM but executes in 32bit. That made a difference in one 64bit ARM.APK file. I had to dig to find that tidbit when the 64bit .APK failed to load. I did a little more research and downloaded the correct 32bit .APK and it executed flawlessly. This may have been childs play for you IT gurus and android phone users ... I've never worked with .APK files before. Far less intimidating than I thought it might be. I feel like I've accomplished something this afternoon. Next challenge, importing my bookmarks from Silk.

(post is archived)

[–] • 2 pts

Be careful with APK from unknown sources. They can contain malware such as key loggers.

[–] • 2 pts

I was. I went straight to Google's APK repository ... only loaded safe files, non beta versions.

[–] • 1 pt

Google play? Brave browser? Sounds like a great idea. Now dig through that thing and turn off as many permissions as possible and turn off as many location settings you can possibly find.

[–] • 1 pt

Did that immediately after device registration. Lol!

[–] • 1 pt

I did the same thing with the Max 11 (13th) I got a few months ago. I got the keyboard and mouse. I mostly got it for work related. Sad that apps like outlook work better on this than the laptop they gave me.

[–] • 1 pt

Amazon makes it challenging to sideload apps. I had to shoehorn Google Play onto it and that seemed to be the easier way vs downloading .APKs every time I wanted to install an app not available through Amazon. By installing Brave through Google Play, Google will maintain Brave for me too! Same with all apps downloaded from Google Play. I took the lazy man's path...

I think the kindles offer a lot of value for the price, especially if "unlocked". I wish I had the 10" display version now...

[–] • 1 pt

https://xdaforums.com/t/windows-linux-tool-fire-toolbox-v39-1.3889604/

Get Fire Toolbox. You can make the tablet do anything for the most part.

[–] • 0 pt

Sounds like a handy app to have. I'm not sure exactly what's in it, I'll have to read through it to better understand it. Is this more for developers or debugging for the average user? Thanks for the link!