[Fire HD 8 and HD 10 Android Development] seanmachine:
hi all! so I just traded in my old and tired 2017 HD8 (gods speed, noble soldier) and got a 2022 (12th gen) HD7 two days ago. out of the box it was... garbage. absolute trash. I knew performance-wise it'd be a downgrade, but holy crap. even the kindle app didn't work right, which is ostensibly half the point of the tablet. which brings me here! which is great, because y'all seem nice.

I installed toolbox, and after a LOT of trial and error (why trust the developer when I can stumble around blindly by myself?) I got it stripped down to pretty bare bones - although a few apps, like Washington Post and My Videos can't be removed, but I figure that'll be fixed in time - and installed Nova. it's lookin' pretty sweet.

the issue I'm having is it seems like any app that so much as pokes at the internet crashes almost immediately. after a couple hours of trying I was finally able to sign into the GPS, but it wasn't until I cleared the cache that I was able to load it and install some basic apps. strangely, the GApps seem to (mostly) work without a problem. google news opens and loads. tends to crash a lot, but whatever. I'd even go so far as to call the GPS zippy. youtube crashes, but VLC is fine. everything else, though, seems borked. neither brave nor kiwi will open for more than a couple seconds - JUST long enough to give you hope before dashing it against the rocks.

I installed advanced task killer, which, ironically, won't open. after a dozen or so attempts though I can get it to open and kill a bunch of stuff, but it doesn't seem to really help. what's interesting is it's never shown more than 1GB of ram being used. and using the system monitor to watch how much ram is being consumed it doesn't appear that it ever goes more than a hair above 1GB, even while apps are crashing.

it feels like these issues somehow tie into the apps "reaching out" (very technical term) to the internet and something getting overwhelmed. I think it's also worth noting that during setup it had a LOT of trouble communicating with googles servers.

the numbers:

Device:Amazon Fire HD 7 (2022)

Codename: quartz

FireOS Version: 8.3.1.1 (I tried the step 1 pre-registration technique, but it had no impact.)

Android Version: 11.0

Security Patch: 2020-09-05

Chipset: MT8168

Nova: 7.0.57

GPS Version: 31.9.13-21 [0] [PR] 467268234

All apps are the most recent version, nothing sideloaded or downgraded.

the only other issues I'm having I think are unrelated, but I felt like I should point them out for the greater good? namely the inability to uninstall/disable certain random apps (Washington Post, My Videos, News, etc.) but nothing important. and the only launchers I was able to install were Lawnchair and Nova (I didn't mess with Microsoft, because oof that looked like a lot of work). I've had absolutely no problems with the toolbox app itself. it's easy to use, functions are well arranged, and thank god someone finally realized some people prefer a nice GUI over a command prompt.

anyway, that's my life story. wanna fight about it?

edit: a thought just occurred to me and I restored silk, and wouldn't you know it, IT works just fine. figures, right?