Tablet advice

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    My laptop has almost reached the end of it's life and am visiting the UK soon for a bit, so thought i'd buy a tablet as i want something small and light. I used to have an ipad and loved it but they're a bit pricey now i'm not working.


    I've been looking at Amazon Fire HD tablets and was wondering if anyone has any experience of them? Ideally i'd like to just have one device and to ditch my phone but not sure that's possible when Whatsapp is my main way of keeping in touch with people. I'm happy to just use Wifi i've not had credit on my phone for nearly a year now but i think Whatsapp only works with a phone number?


    Any advice gratefully received :)

    ive got an Amazon Fire HD 10 inch screen.

    On the good side : Technically its a pretty nice tablet for the money with good connectivity and sound ideal for watching videos or music (or reading books).


    On the bad side there are very few of the very commonly used and available apps on apple store or googleplay available on amazon fire appstore. Most that are are third party clone apps and dont have the same functions.


    Its got very very poor personalisation options and a really annoying as hell user interface.


    Ive had it 10 months and used it for about 3 weeks in total. I really wish id bought a proper tablet.


    I dont know what price range youre looking at. I got the Amazon fire on major reduction offer last January for 120 squid.


    I could have bought a far better 10 inch tablet with latest Android operating software for the same money.


    I'd recommend you do that.


    I had intended -after considerable comparison research- to buy a Neocore tablet,theyre very cheap British made tablet and got very good reviews.


    It was that or look at Lenovo Asus Acer Fusion Huawei (mediapad is excellent) or Samsung (though the latter ive had bad experiences with their technology and software) or Sony

    Personally id buy either Huawei mediapad, Sony Z2 or the Neocore if budget was an issue.


    If you look on Amazon at 10 inch HD tablets theres a good selection of reasonable priced devices from those manufacturers.


    Buy one with at very least 16gb internal memory and at least 2Gb ram and that can take SD cards to extend the storage memory. Factory pre installed apps swallow up a lot of internal memory and you cant remove them.


    All tablets come with wifi connectivity. If you search for a tablet with unlocked 3G or 4G LTE sim capability you can put any data sim card in and use it on the mobile network of your choice and use your whatsapp or any other VOIP app like skype viber telegram etc for calls or chat. You can also use a SIP account such as sipgate to make and receive calls (which is what i use).

    Quote from emmer

    Amazing NRT thank you you've saved me a lot of research with that reply! I'm going to look into getting one with sim capability so i can ditch my phone

    No worries,hope you get a good deal. As for your phone,you could just get a PAYG sim for your phone and put credit on it for emergency backup.

    If you use a tablet for making calls you might find it more convenient getting a headset,either a bluetooth or plug in. Theyre cheap as chips.

    Totally agree with Paul. Telegram is a far better app than whatsapp. Whatsapp and Messenger have only got their popularity lead because they belong to Facebook.Thats always a big reason for alarm bells for me.

    Im slowly persuading friends to switch to Telegram but its hard work.


    Ive also got a SIP phone account with sipgate and a virtual landline number so i dont get any important official or commercial numbers in my social media,theyre all in the SIP account directory in the app.


    Thats one major issue with whatsapp and messenger is they scavenge your contact numbers from devices and online accounts and puts them all in the apps and share around other facebook owned apps and i dont like that.

    Bit late but the fire hd tablets are pretty low spec compared to others on the market hence why they are cheap. They are also crippled (as NRT has mentioned above) by Amazons custom android system and its pretty lacking app store.


    I have the hd7, it cost £35 3 or 4 years ago. The stock experience is crap, almost unusable. I rooted it, removed all the amazon crap, installed the play store and a custom launcher - this made it a pretty good tablet for light web browsing, email, farcebook etc plus almost any app you wanted from the Google play store. If you (or someone you know) wouldn't be comfortable doing that then I'd give it a miss and opt for either a second hand samsung or a newer huawei - both of which will be a similar price.

    Quote from NomadicRT

    As for your phone,you could just get a PAYG sim for your phone and put credit on it for emergency backup.

    Yeah i think am going to do this. Am going to try to reset my old Moto G to factory settings to speed it up a bit then get a new sim when i get back in a few weeks. Maps.me has been invaluable for the last year travelling and even if i could get it on a tablet, i don't want to be walking down the road in random places carrying one.


    Talking about new Sims does anyone know of any good PAYG deals at the minute? I'll be spending the summer in Europe but mostly using Wifi for calls and stuff so won't need much data

    Its always worth having backup phones or at least the ability to use different networks especially when travelling. Ive got a dual sim phone as backup with two different networks to my regular phone. I live in a dire coverage area.

    Maps.me is pretty good.I also use MagicEarth,it doesnt require continuous internet connection. You download and store the maps on SD for the entire country or region you want.You can also do the same with Backcountry.


    EE are doing good deals all the time. I use them for my phone and tablet data.They usually double your data if you top up regularly.. Giffgaff too which is on 02 network. Also Voxi very good which belongs to and uses Vodafone network and also does free use of data on social media sites like Facebook and a few other common sites. https://www.voxi.co.uk/ Lebara have good deals too (also uses the vodafone network). Theres also smarty http://www.smarty.co.uk


    As for tablets,if youre already well used to apple ipad youre probably best sticking with them.Youll probably get a very good deal on the previous model or even a new one in black Friday sales. Amazon have some really big discounts at Black Friday sale time,I very nearly bought an ipad last year because they were discounted so much they were actually affordable.

    About four years ago I bought a secondhand HP Mini 5120 for $85 (about £40) on E-bay. It only has basic Win7 32 bit OS, 150gb HDD and 1 Gb of ram but has not been much trouble. The power supply was not that good but I already had a spare from a Compaq CQ-57. It is the same length and width as a tablet, just thicker.

    Quote from emmer

    does anyone know of any good PAYG deals

    Probably GiffGaff


    (that's my affiliate link, so I earn a fiver every time someone signs up and activates their SIM, and they earn a fiver too)


    These are their "goodybag" rates, which is a monthly rolling PAYG contract that you can leave anytime without notice -- a tenner a month will give you unlimited calls and enough data to do the basics (without heavy use):


    https://www.giffgaff.com/buy/goodybag


    Also, while we're still in the EU, roaming is included in your plan.

    I have giff-gaff too, been on it for a year or so now, at a rolling £6 a month, plus a top-up anytime you need to put one in. Most months my £6 is more than enough, as I use a desktop or laptop for most internet stuff; eyesight is not really good enough to be squinting at little screens for long.

    No complaints, except that the O/H borrows it half the time to make 'free' calls when her payg phone runs out of cash....

    Is that why my sister signed my up when I was in the UK earlier on this year. When I needed a re-charge I went into a service station and the woman behind the counter could not understand what I was saying. She had to get a young man to organise one for me.

    I thought about GiffGaff but with being used to using Wifi for everything i don't think i'd need a tenner a month so it'd be a waste. It'll only be for emergencies so am ideally looking for one that i can just top up when i need to.

    I just bought the latest Samsung Galaxy tablet. I needed it to be delivered to my mums when am there so couldn't wait for black Friday and ended up paying £180 for it. It seems to have good reviews though so hopefully will do the job for the next few years. Cheers for all the advice!