Now Enjoying My 8th Generation Amazon Fire HD8 Tablet with Google Play Store!

My Amazon Fire HD 8 tablet is now 554 days old. It’s running FireOS 7.3.2.2. It was modified to have the Google Play Store 3 days ago.

Hello World, Happy New Year 2022! After waiting a year and a half, or 1.5 years, or 18 months, I decided to have my wife’s fully-sighted nephew, Josh, install Google Play Store onto my Amazon Fire HD 8 tablet (2018), a day after discovering other BLIND persons have already done so. Prior to my sight-loss, I trained Josh most of my advanced computer technical skills, and my wife is glad I did! ☺️

Interestingly, also prior to my sight-loss, I was a full-fledged GNU/Linux systems developer that intentionally avoided, often boycotted Jeff Bezos’ Amazon since the birth of Amazon Web Services, which initially cloned part of my computer business services, causing me to go “out of business”.

Also, prior to my sight-loss, I was an independent Google developer for over a decade, which was why I waited 18 months before having Google Play Store installed into my Amazon Fire tablet. To my knowledge, Amazon intentionally makes their Fire OS, a branch of open-source version of Google Android OS, to work without Google, in addition to preventing Google Play Store from running on their Fire OS. Luckily, someone has discovered a way to defeat those preventative mechanisms! ☺️

In Amazon App Store, there are too many apps that don’t work well with Amazon’s VoiceView screenreader, unless I had previous communications with specific app developer on the Google Android platform. Most of my eMails with Amazon’s accessibility team typically had fruitless outcomes. I quickly discovered VoiceView is a crippled version of an older version of Google TalkBack (screenreader); that happened when Google separated Talkback from their open-source releases of Android OS. (Google moved Talkback to a separate app called, “Android Accessibility Suite”.) My tablet is running Fire OS 7.3, which is equivalent to Google Android 9 “Pie” WITHOUT Google, however, VoiceView acts crippled because its an older version of Google TalkBack, possibly intended for open-source version of Google Android 6 “Marshmallow”, because it never acted like Google TalkBack on my old Android 7 “Nougat” smartphone. Using my Amazon Echo smart-speaker, I frequently made calls to Amazon’s customer service, rarely getting someone from their accessibility team that knows about accessibility for BLIND persons. After determining Amazon’s customer service team is “stupid” when it comes to accessibility and being unable to prove their Fire OS developers have a high school diploma, I gave up talking to Amazon customer service people! — Since I’m originally from Seattle, and had a computer business that Amazon destroyed, it is very easy for me to bash Amazon, and in a couple of cases, threatened to sue them at the King County Courthouse; luckily, I still remember my knowledge of the RCW (Revised Code of Washington).

Previously, I had the Fire 7 tablet, but I’ve identified very poor workmanship of the VoiceView screenreader. I had determined Amazon is not interested in supporting this model nor are they interested in informing their app developers, including their third-party app developers, in making their entire device useful to BLIND persons. I ended up giving my Fire 7 tablet to Josh, whom installed Google Play Store on it, for his grandmother to play Android games on it.

Now, on my Amazon Fire HD 8 tablet with Google Play Store installed three days ago, I’ve successfully installed 95% of my accessible apps from my Google Play Store library, then having Josh to input account information when necessary; I just turn off VoiceView for him to do the “magic” faster than me. ☺️

Not all of my Google Play Store apps are available for my Amazon Fire HD 8 tablet, however, it successfully updated many older apps that were installed from the Amazon App Store, but complained the Bible app is “unsafe”, requesting to uninstall it; after installing the Bible app, Google Play Store has stopped nagging at me. Surprisingly, the preinstalled Alexa companion app works BETTER after Google Play Services from Google app was installed, from installing the Google Assistant! ☺️

For my BOSE QuietComfort 35 II headphones, I installed the BOSE Connect app from Google Play Store, and it recognized Amazon as a “partner”, and then, the Google Assistant became configured on its Action button, allowing me to experience the Google Assistant on that button for the first time. Unfortunately, no matter what configuration changes I made, I was not able to get the Action button to trigger Amazon Alexa from Amazon Fire tablet, like I can from my Xiaomi Redmi 9T smartphone. For some unknown reason, Alexa from my Amazon Fire tablet will not work with my Bose headphones! That’s probably the reason why Bose connect app is not available from Amazon App Store.

Thanks for reading my latest blog post! Have a Great Day!

🇵🇭🇺🇸👨‍🦯🦽 📱⌨️📻🎧 📚🪀🧮

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Published by Marcos 🇵🇭🇺🇸

Happily-Married, comfortably poor, permanently disabled and totally BLIND. A Terrorism SURVIVOR that's still SURVIVING Terrorism + post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Scientist since 1977, Acoustician since 1979, Computer Scientist/Programmer since 1982, Seismologist since 1988, Criminologist (Behavioral Scientist) since 1992, and many more! Also, had worked in two civilian and one military virology labs in the USA between 1993 and 2003. A Generation X, Filipino-American US expat, living in The Philippines, whom was naturally-born in Boston, grew up mostly in Seattle, some in Chicago, and have lived in Anchorage & San Francisco. Became permanently-disabled in 2003 due to health-related illness, ending my moonlighting career as an independent private investigator in the USA. RETIRED independent developer of computing & electronics technologies after 35 wonderful years, including 20 wonderful years in GNU/Linux development & 8 wonderful years as an independent embedded systems developer of digital electronics. Former speech synthesis systems developer of 30 wonderful years, specializing in foreign language phoneme-to-speech synthesis. Also was a beta tester of third-party software-based speech synthesizers. Former FCC-licensed amateur radio operator of 20 wonderful years, beginning with 2m packet-radio & AmSat communications between Anchorage & Manila. Former member of Anchorage Amateur Radio Club and Mike & Key ARC in Seattle. Learned 10-finger QWERTY touch-typing on a manual typewriter in 1980 at a US-based elementary school. Mastered 10-finger QWERTY touch-typing without looking at the keyboard in 1986. Now have osteoarthritis in both of my hands from all that touch-typing! My primary computer programming language is C, which I learned in 1990. My secondary programming language is B.A.S.I.C., which I self-learned in 1982. Prior to my sight-loss, I used to program in LISP/CLISP and Prolog for my early development of artificial intelligence & machine learning programs. Daily, to compensate/facilitate my sight-loss, I am actively using Apple iOS VoiceOver, Google Android TalkBack and Amazon Fire OS VoiceView screen-readers, in addition to my external Bluetooth QWERTY keyboard and sometimes, my Orbit Writer Braille keyboard, as HOBBIES.

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