Fire Tablet as VIrtual Photobook, Help?

June 2, 2019 4:17 PM

Hi, AskMe. :) I'm trying to set up a sort of virtual photo book/slide show view for my Thai grandma. She struggles with technology at best, so we want the experience to be as simple as possible.

We got an Amazon fire tablet from Best Buy for $40, but I'm struggling a lot with the logistics of actually getting it set up. I initially registered it to my own amazon account because it was easiest, but I now see that might not have been a great idea in terms of actually keeping things simple.

We want to be able to share photos, videos, and such, but have as little for Grandma to be confused by as possible. Amazon seems to insist on linking the tablet to their prime-based photo storage solution, which I forgot about until this afternoon and don't really use in any case.

I'm struggling a bit with the logistics of doing this in the days I have left, until mom has to take the tablet and herself off to THailand for three weeks or so.

Any advice would be very much appreciated. My brother and I floated the idea of a regular photo book, but mom was less than enthused, so some kind of technological solution it is.

posted by Alensin to Computers & Internet (4 answers total)

I hope someone will chime in with a better solution but here's a simple one. On the home page, uninstall all the apps you don't need or "hide" the apps that you can't uninstall, in a folder. Then install WhatsApp from the developer's website. (You might have to first go to Settings >Security & Privacy >Allow apps from unknown sources.)

You/your family install it as well and then you can send photos and videos. Anything you send will also end up in the "Photos" app, sorted by date. This doesn't involve Amazon's cloud storage at all.

It's not a slide show but it is pretty accessible. The Amazon app store might have a better solution.
posted by TWinbrook8 at 7:53 PM on June 2, 2019

Too bad you've already purchased the tablet as this would be an ideal use case for a simple, connected digital photo frame. Grandma could have the frame permanently set up on her bedside table with power and WiFi connection. You could then control the images that appear in the frame's automatic slide show via the cloud. Grandma needs to do nothing except look at the pictures.

If the Fire tablet is returnable, you still have time to pick up a pix star frame
posted by McNulty at 8:47 PM on June 2, 2019

Seconding the frame suggestion, which is kind of not what you're asking for BUT my sister just got my grandma a Frameo and it's awesome. There is an app that an umlimited number of people can set up on their phones, and whenever you snap a picture you can just send it to the frame directly. It keeps up to 3,000 photos and is awesome.

FWIW, Amazon photos does have an auto-upload feature so if you want to explore using the photo storage on Amazon in some kind of way you could auto-upload your own photos and then sort what you want to share into a shared album, like, once a week or so.
posted by cheese at 11:26 AM on June 3, 2019

Since there are a few people involved, try connecting the Kindle to a new Amazon account that all of you can log into and add media to.

What points of difficulty are you running into?
posted by trig at 1:52 PM on June 3, 2019