Cracking Open Amazon Fire

Released in 2011 for $200, Amazon’s original Kindle Fire was a moderately priced tablet with average specs. It was more an entertainment device and shopping portal than anything else. The new Fire tablet takes this concept to the extreme, but does it at a quarter of the cost.

Cracking Open Amazon Fire: Dimensions

Its dimensions are nearly identical to the original Kindle Fire, but it weighs slightly less and has a more rounded back cover. It also has a lot of features the older tablet didn’t have, like cameras, a microphone, and a microSD card slot, which is good because like the original Kindle Fire it only has 8GB of internal storage and more than 2 of that is used for the operating system. Also like the original Kindle Fire, the screen has a 1,024×600-pixel resolution, so it’s not high-definition like Amazon’s Fire HD tablets. And the front panel isn’t made with Gorilla Glass, so it’s not are durable as many other tablets on the market.

Cracking Open Amazon Fire: Power button, volume button, mic, headphone jack and rear camera

Cracking Open Amazon Fire: microSD card slot

Cracking Open Amazon Fire: Popping off the back cover

Cracking Open Amazon Fire: Removing the back cover

Cracking Open Amazon Fire: Internal hardware

Cracking Open Amazon Fire: System board, battery, speakers, and front panel

Cracking Open Amazon Fire: Back cover

Cracking Open Amazon Fire: Disconnecting the battery

Cracking Open Amazon Fire: Removing the battery

Cracking Open Amazon Fire: 2980 mAh Li-ion battery

Cracking Open Amazon Fire: Removing the rear-facing camera

Cracking Open Amazon Fire: 2MP rear-facing camera

Cracking Open Amazon Fire: Detaching the system board connectors

Cracking Open Amazon Fire: Removing the system board screws

Cracking Open Amazon Fire: Removing the speaker

Cracking Open Amazon Fire: Mono speaker

Cracking Open Amazon Fire: Removing the system board

Cracking Open Amazon Fire: Front panel and display attached to frame

Cracking Open Amazon Fire: FocalTech FT5436i touch controller

Cracking Open Amazon Fire: Removing the shield from the system board

Cracking Open Amazon Fire: System board - Front

Cracking Open Amazon Fire: System board - Bacl

Cracking Open Amazon Fire: 1.3 GHz Mediatek MT8127 ARM Cortex A7 quad-core processor

Cracking Open Amazon Fire: 1GB Samsung DRAM chip K4E8E304EE-AGCE

Cracking Open Amazon Fire: 8GB Samsung eMMC storage module KLM8G1GEND-B0310

Cracking Open Amazon Fire: MediaTek MT6323 power management IC

Cracking Open Amazon Fire: VGA front-facing camera

Cracking Open Amazon Fire: 3.5mm headphone jack

Cracking Open Amazon Fire: micro-USB port

Cracking Open Amazon Fire: microSD slot

Cracking Open Amazon Fire: System board markings

Cracking Open Amazon Fire: Completed teardown