# Did Amazon slow the older Kindles like Apple did to iphones?



## wdonovan (Jan 8, 2018)

Hi all. I have used a Fire HD 3rd gen for a few years and was perfectly happy with it. A few months it slowed down to a crawl, mostly noticeable when using the Silk browser. Browser startup became painfully slow (maybe 30 seconds or more til stable). If I typed anything into the search bar prior to total stability, the characters would appear then be overwritten by the next character. This meant almost every time I started I would have to backspace my first search and retype. Afterwards, pages could take 30 seconds to 1-1/2 minutes to load. This while being 10 feet from a router and my iphone loading the same content in a few tenths of a second.

I googled for answers and rebooted, checked for updates, everything suggested online. I saw that many people hated the Silk browser so I loaded and installed Firefox. It operated exactly as slowly as Silk. So I ordered an HD 8. It arrived and it loads browser pages very fast, EXACTLY LIKE MY 3rd gen used to do. 

Is this slowing caused by an o/s update for the newer tablets that brings the old ones to a crawl? I was perfectly happy with what I had and don't find any advantages in the HD8 (for my needs) other than the old Fire had become useless as a web browser.

Anyone experience the same?


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## WDR (Jan 8, 2014)

I have a first generation PageWhite and have not noticed any slowdowns. Yet. I haven't run an update on it in a while, that could change. However, I can point out that when I first got my ebook readers (Nook, Kindle, and Kobo) they all could go a few weeks between charges while I was reading books. Now, they can hardly get through  book before they complain about needing a battery charge.

Apple did not purposefully slow down iPhones to force people to buy new ones. One of the functions of iOS is to keep the phone operational between charges for as long as possible. Lithium Ion batteries do not last forever. Their lifespan runs about 3 to 5 years before they really can't hold a charge anymore. So, as the battery ages, Apple's iOS keeps making adjustments to keep the battery lasting as long as possible between charges, and those adjustments are to throttle down the processes (programs) so they aren't consuming so much energy. The mistake that Apple---and most other tech manufacturers---made was they didn't build into the system an alert to bring to your attention that the battery was reaching the end of its useful life and needed to be replaced.

The reality is that Apple took the fall for practices that all the tech companies follow. And yes, because they make money by you buying new stuff every few years, there isn't much incentive on them to be more forthcoming about the lifespan of a product.

Another factor in all this is whenever a company comes out with a new product, they want the software to take advantage of every "Gee-Whiz!" feature that new product can deliver. So the OS the product uses gets an update to utilize the new features and capabilities of the new hardware and older machines tend to suffer performance loss because they just can't keep up with the demands of the new software.

Bring that all together: you had an older piece of hardware with aging batteries and running new software that was optimized to be running on their newest and more powerful device. Very likely your old Fire HD couldn't handle the load.


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## wdonovan (Jan 8, 2018)

Thanks for that Wm. Everything you say is plausible but there are a few things in my case that may defy these ideas. The o/s on my Kindle may have been updated by Amazon but I have never in my entire ownership seen a difference in behavior or features with an update. The new machine has an entirely different o/s, I think based on Lolipop. 
My use has been very limited. I run only a few apps and rarely update them. Pretty much everything I run now was installed when I bought the unit and all apps run at the same speed as always which to me would eliminate poor battery performance as a factor. 
The slowdown seems to be solely wifi throughput speed... as if is being severely throttled now. This came on all at once, maybe 3 months ago. I cannot tie the date to an update but a greedy o/s seems the most likely candidate. 
Being a "legacy" machine by now and giving the fact that Amazon uses newer o/s's for their newer machines, it's hard to make sense out of the theory that they had to update the old o/s to the point of crippling the machines they are strictly dedicated to... unless of course it is an atempt at getting customers to toss them out the window due to frustration.


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## jobo132435 (Jan 9, 2018)

I doubt very much they have, apple did so to extend the useful life of the product, that doesn't sound like an Amazon thing! Up dates should be to the os that you have, they shouldn't. Be installing new operating system to hard ware that can't cope, that would slow it down. 

You have to face the fact that machines wear out with use and become less efficient, but as your issue is only related to one app and one function,ie internet access, id look else where before condemning the device.

Silk browser is ponderously slow one new devices, if you haven't cleared the file cash in some years that may 
well slow it down  it down! So do that and / or put a decent browser one there and try that, install Ccleaner to get rid of years of clutter. Put a speed checker on it and see if either your WiFi connection or the internet is slowing you down. Do so both on charge and free to see if the battery is an issue.


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## jobo132435 (Jan 9, 2018)

Nb, there is also the issue of which web sites you are trying to access. As devices become more powerful, the design of web site undress in complexity, older computers struggle to down load some sites, never mind a tiny little kindle. Sites tend to do a mobile version, but even these will be aimed at the current generation of devices with quad cores and lots of spare ram.

It's worth seeing what spar ram capacity you have and shutting down apps running in the back ground to free up ram and cpu


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## LawrenceTorres (Feb 18, 2020)

wdonovan said:


> Hi all. I have used a Fire HD 3rd gen for a few years and was perfectly happy with it. A few months it slowed down to a crawl, mostly noticeable when using the Silk browser. Browser startup became painfully slow (maybe 30 seconds or more til stable). If I typed anything into the search bar prior to total stability, the characters would appear then be overwritten by the next character. This meant almost every time I started I would have to backspace my first search and retype. Afterwards, pages could take 30 seconds to 1-1/2 minutes to load. This while being 10 feet from a router and my iphone loading the same content in a few tenths of a second.
> 
> I googled for answers and rebooted, checked for updates, everything suggested online. I saw that many people hated the Silk browser so I loaded and installed Firefox. It operated exactly as slowly as Silk. So I ordered an HD 8. It arrived and it loads browser pages very fast, EXACTLY LIKE MY 3rd gen used to do.
> 
> ...


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## WDR (Jan 8, 2014)

For the most part, probably not. Possible, but unless Amazon comes clean with it, there is really no way to verify it.

When a company comes out with a new operating system for their widgets, that new operating system is usually optimized for their latest and greatest product that has all the top of the line capabilities. This means that older devices will more and more choke on the latest software. So every time you update, it is likely that your older devices will begin to bog down as they try to keep up with the software's demands with evermore obsolete hardware.

Video games have long been guilty of this. They tend to push the computer to its absolute limits. I bought a video game several years ago, only to discover that the computer I had at the time was completely unable to run it in any way. When I finally got a new computer, I started up that video game and...it was amazing! Just the difference in faster CPUs and greater memory made the game playable.

On the Apple issue, it was in the documentation and in articles for years that iOS would adjust the performance to maintain the health of the battery and extend its longevity. I was personally surprised when it suddenly became a hot-button issue and people were claiming that Apple hid it to force iPhone sales. Hidden in plain sight, I guess. But more to the point, as iOS increased in versions it became increasingly demanding on older hardware because it was optimized for the more advanced chipsets and memory of the newer iPhones. For people who had older iPhones whose batteries were already reaching their end-of-life, the heavier draw of the operating system combined with the programmed priority to extend battery life would cause the throttling to be more aggressive on the oldest machines.

There is relief on the horizon for all devices (including cars) that use rechargeable batteries: Hydro Quebec is working to commercialize solid-state batteries, which will have significantly longer life and greater charge than the current Lithium Ion batteries. These new batteries also charge extraordinarily fast, which means your devices (and cars) will be able to charge within minutes rather than hours. These new batteries are expected to hit the markets in about two or three years, assuming there are no hiccups in scaling up the manufacturing systems.


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