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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."

3 of 41 comments (clear)

  1. 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.

  2. 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.

  3. 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