The DWARF II Smart Telescope is a very neat device, embraced by many. I use mine usually with a 10" Android tablet, when at home. This tablet is a little bit too large to fit into the DWARF's bag however.
For portable use of the telescope, therefore my Android phone was the only option. As well as the app is, it is tricky for me to operate with cold fingers. Even with warm hands, the small screen on the phone is not really helpful.
Consequently, I felt the need to purchase an inexpensive Android tablet, small enough to fit in said bag, but big enough for easy operations.
Tablets with smaller screens were popular once. Today, there are only a handful models with modern specs available. The 3 brands I am aware of are Amazon, Lenovo and Samsung. This order seems not only alphabetical, it also reflects prices from low to high.
Here is an overview about the dimensions in mm we have to consider:
device length width
DWARF II 204.0 130.0 (height)
A. fire 7 192.0 115.0
A. fire HD 8 201.9 137.34
L. Tab M7 176.3 102.9
L. Tab M8 198.2 122.6
S. GalTab.A8" 206.6 126.7
All things considered, the Amazon fire HD 8 made the race. First of all, the specs of the fire HD 8 are a lot better than those of the fire 7. Further, the fire HD 8 was on clearance sale, decently reduced, so the purchase of another gadget could be justified.
Does it fit in the bag? Perfectly.
The big question of course is, if the DWARFLAB app can be installed on a device which is, unless hacked, very restricted in its abilities. Of course the DWARFLAB app is not in the Amazon Appstore, not a big surprise here.
However, DWARFLAB has the app as apk-file for download from their webpage. The "Silk Browser" (the browser of Amazon's fire tablets) surprisingly let me download said apk-file. There was a little trick however: one has to hold down on the download-link until the browser offer to download the link. Just tabbing the link did not do anything for me.
The browser than will ask for permission to write file to storage, with the warning that such files could harm your device.
Once the file is on your device, you can install the DWARFLAB app, after confirming security concerns of Fire OS.
The application runs perfectly fine on the Amazon fire HD 8.
Having a comfortable UI for the DWARF II, I would consider today's exercise a success.
