Amazon's Kindle Fire Rooted 2 Days After Launch
Expect to see custom ROMs for the Kindle Fire now that the device has been rooted.
Monday Amazon began shipping its Kindle Fire tablet to consumers, yet the device has already found itself painfully ripped apart and rooted just two days later -- now that's a welcoming committee!
The rooted aspect arrives by way of "death2all110" who managed to accomplish the process by using both SuperOneCLick 2.2 and the Android SDK.
"To get adb going you must already have the sdk on your machine and used it," the user writes. "Goto: %USERPROFILE%\.android and edit the adb_usb.ini and add [0x1949] to the end of the file and save. Then go into where you have the sdk at and open the google-usb_driver folder and edit android_winusb.inf and add [this code] to the [Google.NTx86] section and [Google.NTamd64] section."
Root access should allow the Android developer community to create custom ROMs for Amazon's new tablet, maybe even bring Android 4.0.1 Ice Cream Sandwich to the device now that it's gone open source. Hardware really shouldn’t be an issue given that the new OS theoretically merges the smartphone 2.x version and the tablet 3.x version together under one roof, eliminating fragmentation.
In addition to the rooting, Tuesday brought reports that Kindle Fire owners can install apps not sold on Amazon's Appstore by following a list of steps similar to how death2all110 rooted the device. The instructions are for Mac, but they can be easily converted over to PC. Here's the list:
(Note: You'll need to install and run the Android SDK at least once)
- On the Kindle Fire Settings screen, go to "Device" and turn On "Allow Installation of Application From Unknown Sources"
- Plug your Kindle Fire into your Mac
- Open ~/.android/adb_usb.ini with your favorite text editor
- Add the value "0x1949" to the end of the file and save it.
- You’ll need to restart the adb server process to get it to re-read that file. Do that with "adb kill-server".
- Run "adb devices" and you should see the attached device.
Act Local Media reports that 0x1949 is the Vendor ID for Lab126, Amazon's Skunkworks that develops all their hardware devices.
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If Modern Warfare 3 and Skyrim hadn't come out last week it would have only taken 1 day.
No ROMs yet. Give it a little more time....
If Modern Warfare 3 and Skyrim hadn't come out last week it would have only taken 1 day.
LOL he how was he playing them on his mac?
Yep I expected this, the Fire is gonna be an awesome buy once ICS is ported to it (more then it already is), the price is nice and the hardware is very good.
That's hardly surprising - Amazon explicitly stated they are not locking down the device and are not going to be bothered by rooted devices. It's no sport at all for the hackers...
But a faster Nook is coming out soon for only $50 with a MicroSD slot and more possibilities. You can always download the Kindle app on your Nook running Honeycomb.
not really a tablet fan, but love the tablet price war between nook and kindle. if they get reasonable enough, i can get one for my wife...she's finally into her lg ally i got her, but she enjoyed a demo lenovo tablet i brought home so I'm keeping my eyes open, but wouldn't pay more than $200 for one.
$50 sounds nice...but i'm definitely skeptical.
If Modern Warfare 3 and Skyrim hadn't come out last week it would have only taken 1 day.
Wouldn't it be fun to do an analysis on general productivity by age during these blockbuster release weeks?
Ah... to be a sociological historian...
LOL he how was he playing them on his mac?
SLOOOOOWLY
And the great part in all this, is that Amazon recognizes the need/existence of rooting and doesn't care about it.