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Adventures In Rooting: Running Jelly Bean On Last Year's Kindle Fire

Posted by samzenpus on from the it's-good-to-have-a-hobby dept.

concealment writes "Luckily, the Fire's low price and popularity relative to other Android tablets has made it a common target for Android's bustling open-source community, which has automated most of the sometimes-messy process of rooting and flashing your tablet. The Kindle Fire Utility boils the whole rooting process down to a couple of steps, and from there it's pretty easy to find pretty-stable Jelly Bean ROMs. A CyanogenMod-based version is actively maintained, but I prefer the older Hashcode ROM, which is very similar to the interface on the Nexus 7."

15 of 41 comments (clear)

  1. Re:first root by binarylarry · · Score: 3, Funny

    RIM is hiring again?

    --
    Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
  2. Making the best of a bad situation by Dreamlandlocal · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The original Kindle Fire OS is an abomination. Out of the box it has possibly the worst UI in the mobile space and it is quickly apparent that a concerted effort was made to restrict what you can (consume Amazon content) and can't (everything else) do with the the hardware.

    Anyone who reads this site, owns a Kindle and has not modified the default configuration in some way is doing themselves an enormous disservice. From side-loading a new launcher and few of quality-of-life apps, to rooting, to a flashing a whole new ROM, there is a variety of ways to make the best of your (bad) situation.

    Despite the best efforts of devs, last year's kindle fire is ultimately a very flawed device. It has absolutely nothing to recommend it over the alternatives and if the new crop of kindles is anything like the last generation, take your $200 and spent it on a Nexus 7.

    1. Re:Making the best of a bad situation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      Personally I went from ICS back to the stock Kindle firmware. Once you root it and add Google services it's not bad. A little unstable, sure, but certainly not an abomination. I downgraded mostly because I like my devices to have a niche, and a 5" phone with JB would overlap a lot with a 7" ICS or JB tablet, leading to one falling into disuse.

      The stock Otter launcher is content-oriented rather than app and widget oriented. It works great for movies, books, and documents which is kinda the point of buying a Fire over another Android tablet. You can't get Amazon Prime Video Streaming, or the Kindle Lending Library on stock Android, and going through your entire book/document/movie collection every time you want to resume something is going to be a pain after a while, if that's the primary use for your tablet.

      If you want stock Android, go with a Nexus. If you want to consume Amazon content, go with a Fire. There's not much point in buying one and doing tons of hacks to make it behave like the other, unless you change your mind. Personally, I think the Fires have enough advantages to justify their purchase, but that's me.

    2. Re:Making the best of a bad situation by tlhIngan · · Score: 2

      The original Kindle Fire OS is an abomination. Out of the box it has possibly the worst UI in the mobile space and it is quickly apparent that a concerted effort was made to restrict what you can (consume Amazon content) and can't (everything else) do with the the hardware.

      Which was the entire intent of the device.

      Amazon's business case for the Kindle hardware is the exact opposite to that of Apple. Apple sells content to promote the sales of hardware. (iTunes makes very little revenue compared to hardware sales. How much profit gets made is unknown).

      Amazon, though, sells hardware at cost to promote the sale of content (of which they make 30% or more).

      Remember, Amazon sells books, movies and music, and the whole purpose of the hardware is to promote sales of all that stuff - after all, you buy the hardware once, but if they have you constantly buying books (especially now that the agency model is bunk - go away iBookstore, go away B&N nook store - you're interfering with our sales), music and movies, Amazon makes a good chunk off that.

      It's partly why Google decided to get in the game with the Play Store - Play Books, Play Music, Play Movies.

      But to be honest, for 7" tablets, you might as well go with a Nexus 7. You can do everything the kindle does, but it's more open.

  3. Mine is rooted by __aaqvdr516 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I jumped through a few ROMS before I settled on the Hellfire Kindle Sandwich.
    http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1585814

    Unless things have changed, you don't get hardware acceleration unless you're using some modified version of the stock ROM (hence the sandwich).

    It runs reasonably well for what I do with it, which is next to nothing. If it wouldn't have been free, I wouldn't have it.

  4. Re:Can you still run the Amazon applications? by yelvington · · Score: 2

    No. You probably can install a Kindle reader app, but you can't watch Amazon video on a rooted device.

    But as a Kindle Fire user and a veteran of much smartphone hacking ... I don't see the point in ANY of this. What are you actually gaining? What does "fully functional tablet" mean? If you don't like the Kindle launcher, install something else. I use http://golauncher.goforandroid.com/ on my KF.

  5. Re:Mine is rooted - same but with Jandycane ROM by spd_rcr · · Score: 2

    I've been running the latest ROM from project Jandycane over on XDA, hardware acceleration works just fine. The one thing I haven't bothered to sort out yet is the sleep mode. With the stock Kindle Fire ROM you can hit the power button and leave the Fire in your bag for a week or two without the battery running down, now it's running in the background as if it were a phone and the battery's flat in a day.
    Otherwise, it works far better now that it did unmodified.
    If you want to run Amazon apps, just register it as one of your android devices and re-send the apps to it.
    This article is a bit dated, Jandycane is now on 1.7.3 updated last Oct.1st, but it hasn't changed that much.
    http://www.androidauthority.com/kindle-fire-jelly-bean-tablet-ui-jandycane-custom-rom-105945/

    --
    - tensions in our lives that are attacking our minds, unite themselves together to make our consciousness blind - op'ivy
  6. Language issues by Macgrrl · · Score: 4, Funny

    Rooting means something entirely different in Australia, I was a bit taken aback by the subject line when it scrolled past my screen.

    --
    Sara
    Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
    1. Re:Language issues by tepples · · Score: 2

      What word do they use instead to mean "gaining superuser privileges" in Australia?

  7. KF Dramas by dflek · · Score: 2

    I tried a lot of different configurations, almost bricked my Fire, created a Frankencable to resurrect it and eventually settled on JandyCane (a great, stable ROM). Through this entire process I learnt a valuable lesson... Unless you are in the US, just buy a Google Nexus (in my defence they weren't available at the time).

  8. I have a Kindle Fire and a Google Nexus 7 by linuxguy · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I have a Kindle Fire and a Google Nexus 7. My advice to anybody out there considering buying an Amazon Kindle Fire is: "Don't do it"

    Do yourself a favor and buy the Nexus 7. Kindle Fire OS is utter crap. It has limited hardware, is slower, cannot compete on battery life or RAM or cameras ... the list goes on. In a world with Google Nexus 7, nobody should be buying Kindle Fire.

  9. Re:Can you still run the Amazon applications? by DrXym · · Score: 2

    But as a Kindle Fire user and a veteran of much smartphone hacking ... I don't see the point in ANY of this.

    The Kindle is a cheap(ish) / subsidized tablet running a proprietary fork of Android locked into Amazon's crappy app store. I can see the incentive for wanting to root the device and turn it into a standard android device. Not everyone watches videos through their tablet.

  10. Call that a root? Now this is a root... by DeathElk · · Score: 2

    Come down to Oz, Andro-nerds. I'll give you an adventure in rooting.

  11. Re:Can you still run the Amazon applications? by confusedwiseman · · Score: 2

    The benefit is that you can get the Google Play store on the device. This can only be achieved after rooting the device. I much prefer the AOSP experience to the one that Amazon chose for me. I've also used go launcher, and a root control tool so that you could temp unroot and continue to use the amazon streaming. Dual boot is feasible, however, with the Kindle's limited 8gb of storage, a lot of storage space gets tied up in the "other OS" you're not using. I prefer the full tablet functionality, but that's the beauty of Android. Pick what suits you.

  12. Re:New non-HD version? by kriston · · Score: 2

    The new Kindle Fire non-HD has 1 gigabyte of RAM and the very same processor is now clocked to 1.2 GHz. The other components are entirely the same except for the missing ambient light sensor which was never enabled on the original Kindle Fire to begin with.

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    Kriston