Apps and reading on the Kindle Fire HD 8� Part 2
Continued from Apps and reading on the Kindle Fire HD 8 Part 1
3. OneDrive - If you prefer not to access your servers over a LAN and abhor using the micro USB cable, then you can move files to your Kindle Fire HD 8 using OneDrive instead. The OneDrive version available on the Amazon Appstore is the same as the version on Google Play, so its certainly an option if you own a Windows PC or an Android tablet and want to exchange files with your Fire.
4. Xodo PDF Reader and Editor / Adobe Acrobat Reader - Xodo PDF Reader is a reliable and lightweight PDF viewer, and a good alternative to the long in the tooth Adobe Acrobat Reader for Android. Both can handle large file PDFs on the Fire HD 8.
5. OneNote - If youre the type to take notes while reading, then OneNote is good for collecting screenshots and taking text snippets when needed.
6. Flipboard
7. IMDb
8. Perfect Viewer ($2.99) / Comics Manga Reader - Perfect Viewer is an excellent Android app for reading scanned out-of-print comic books and 70s-80s Spidey titles (not the absolute crap Marvel Comics has been publishing the last decade). Perfect Viewer costs $2.99 on the Amazon Appstore, but once installed, you can also install the separate PDF plugin and File Source plugin.
If youre stingy and have minimal needs, you can opt for the modestly designed, but perfectly usable and free Comics Manga Reader.
9. Text editor(Notepad) - There are several text editors available on the Kindle Appstore, but the creatively named Text editor(Notepad) is more than adequate when you need to jot down plain text.
Note: OneNote is fine, but adds extra markup and isnt the best if you plan to use unformatted UTF-8 characters for an e-mail, web page, or document.
Reading .mobi files on the Kindle Fire HD 8
There are thousands of articles online regarding how to read .mobi and .epub files on the Kidle Fire HD 8. Amazon restricts .epub support for obvious reasons, despite the companys already strong hold on the ebook market. However, there are workarounds to reading .epubs on Fire tablets, though the following are the most common methods:- Sideloading EPUB reader apps
- Installing Google Play and installing EPUB reader apps
- Converting EPUBs to .mobi or .azw using an application like Calibre
Note: Publishers are so aware of this Amazon limitation that many of them actually provide instructions on their website on how to support EPUBs on Amazon devices. For my part, I actually use a Kobo Glo for my EPUB files and use the Kindle Fire HD 8 for the occasional .mobi file, which is a file format option when downloading books from Gutenberg.org.
Arguably the simplest way to open a .mobi file on the Kindle Fire HD 8 is to copy the .mobi file to the Books folder in the internal memory. You can then use a file manager to open the .mobi file, which automatically uses the Kindle app to display the contents of the file.
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| You can copy .mobi files to the Books folder in the Fires Internal storage. The Kindle app creates temporary folders when you open the .mobi file however. |
Note, however, that copying the .mobi file to the Books folder will not list the book in the Kindle app, which is the reason why you would use an app like File Commander to open it. Also, this method creates an extra folder in the Books directory for the .mobi file, which the Kindle app uses to read the compressed contents.
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| A .mobi file opened in the Kindle app. |
