Last week, I bought some Amazon Fire 7th Gen from Target under $30 and have received them already. LOL and behold, It's a customized Amazon Fire loaded with lots of Amazon ad bloatwares.
Upon booting up, it asks to sign up for an Amazon account right after a WiFi configuration. I complied and this was a big mistake. Then, it started automatically downloading upgrades after the account setup with WiFi configured. Now, when I turned off the display or when it enters into a blank screen after idling for 1 minute, it will show an ad when I turn it back on. Searching through Google revealed this device isn't rootable (as of this writing). However, there is a
video that shows how to bypass the signup for a new account. Basically, during the WiFi selection (after detection), let it sit until it times out to offer a
SKIP option. The
SKIP option will bypass WiFi setup and thus no Amazon account sign up. Once the tablet finishes booting, I could configure WiFi through either the Settings icon and/or swiped down from top to show the settings menu. However, once the WiFi get configured, the Amazon Fire OS starts to check for and downloads the upgrade if available. It will start updating when the device is in idle mode. Without signing up and/or registered to an Amazon, the tablet is pretty useless. It uses its own Amazon (no Google) playstore software to manage software download. However, if you manage to install the
A-Z App Store APK, I am sure you can install Android software to your Amazon Fire 7the Gen tablet. Since this tablet uses a MediaTek SoC, not all software written for an Android smartphone will work. For instance, I could install Google Street Map for Android OS, but it shows a blank screen when launched. Also, when I tried to install Google Map, the installation crashed. OTOH, I had no problem to install and use WhatsApp, Skype, etc., on my Amazon Fire 7th Gen tablet. Overall, this is not a bad tablet, especially if it can be rooted and/or run any open-source OS, i.e. debian, etc.
As I mentioned above, I made a mistake to configure the WiFi and signed up for an Amazon account to let it update my tablet. When I tried the approach as shown on the
video, it no longer shows the
SKIP option after even idling 5+ minutes. So, I selected the
+ Setup another network (IIRC) and then pressed the BACK button to return back to WiFi detection menu with the
SKIP option enabled.