Kindle Fire Hacked to Run Early Version of Android 4.0 ICS
Good news for those of you with Kindle Fires and a penchant for tinkering with your gadgets.
Amazon's Kindle Fire has been a huge seller this holiday season, mainly because of its low price tag. With the majority of tablets out there going for upwards of $350, a $199 offering is an attractive option for many. Of course, there's also the fact that the Amazon Fire runs on a customized Android 2.3 Gingerbread OS, so many are hoping they can snag themselves this cheap $199 Android-based ereader and then hack it to run a stock version of Android. However, it's unlikely new Kindle Fire users hoping for just that anticipated that the device would be hacked to run an early version of Ice Cream Sandwich, which most Android users are still waiting on.
Boy Genius Report reports that Kindle Fire users now have access to an unofficial Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich update thanks to the members of xda-developers. Forum members recently announced that they had succeeding in getting a "pre-alpha" build of Android 4.0 running on Amazon's beefed up ereader tablet. Though users installing the update will lose all of Amazon's special Android customizations, those who purchase the tablet with the intention to update to a more traditional form of Android probably won't be too disappointed. That said, if you do decide to go ahead with this modification, know that this pre-release version isn't exactly bug-free and there are some issues to be ironed out. With that said, head on over to xda-developers to read up on the hacking process.
Check out the video below for a demo:
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That's a step in the right direction, but I'll wait until a more substantial version is available. Not too concerned about loosing the carousel and other Amazon customizations, though. Boy was this thing easy to root and install Android Market on. Can't beat the price for what it is.
Kindle is losing its direction and its target market, There are millions of vendors making android tablets and they're not going to be able to compete in the price range they sell their "e-readers" for. Stick to the black and white e-readers that people can read out in sunlight and work on tricking those out, maybe built in light assembly for night reading etc. Unless they are able to subsidize them with a 3/4G plan, they are basically building a weak/under powered android tablet that is a dime a dozen at anything under $400
I'm still waiting on a custom ICS Rom for my Thunderbolt. Come on XDA-Dev's.
Still, this is very cool. I was running Honeycomb on my wife's Nook Color for a while, but it was constantly getting bogged down so I gave up on it.
Wow that runs like garbage.
Of course it runs likes garbage, it's a pre-alpha release
*rolls eyes*
I was just waiting for these news to get a Kindle Fire
I'm amazed that this video is still on youtube. These usually last no more than an hour.
There is already a Amazon Kindle app for the Android Tabs so they can always install that with ICS. I currently have it on my Toshiba Thrive tablet 10.1" (rooted with custom ROM) and works great with it.