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Kindle Fire Runs Ice Cream Sandwich

Alexander Udalov — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 20:02:43 +0000

It was an early Ice Cream Sandwich build demoed at Liliputing couple of days ago.

Since then, the development efforts were concentrated on elimination of serious flaws of this ‘pre-alpha’ build of ICS by JackpotClavin:

– SD card was not mounting, and many apps that require presence of it might not work properly, or weren’t install at all;

– video was not working;

– sound was not working, most of the time

– micro-freezes of UI here and there, force-closures of apps.

Update for JackpotClavin’s pre-alpha ICS build was released by XDA-Developers member bl1nkk that addresses some of these bugs and problems:

Workarounds/Fixes:
Landscape support in the launcher: Use Trebuchet to enable landscape support in the launcher. Nebkat is working on this almost every day, check the thread from time to time for even more changes. It’s also the CM9 launcher if you didn’t know yet.

It has a menu button in the drawer.
Trebuchet settings → General → Auto-rotate screen
And landscape mode should work.

SDCard mounting: push /system/bin/vold from CM7 to your device and set its permissions to 777.
I uploaded it for you right here.
MD5: f2ba34b9e0a18a8621abd6b82fbe334e

Rom, including the fixes above: XperiaPlayer packaged all fixes in a flashable zip right here. It’s a complete ROM, not just a patch. If you do a clean flash, use this one!
MD5: 81fb293c32016f8ca3c09df3e9612d8d

Whenever you feel like you’d want to experiment with your Kindle Fire, or just out of curiosity, you can try it:

ROM: tryforsdcard.zip | 821a44ed5cf44f6be1110da868de9ddd
Google Apps Addon: gapps_ics_4.0.3_v8.koush.zip | fcb89b851b1d6abb202c2a63586d829b

Root & Superuser: This rom is rooted already, just install Superuser from the market or flash this in TWRP.
MD5: a5d14dc42323a61caf71549a885af8c3

As of now, the update doesn’t offer all the fixes, plus more bugs and glitches are discovered

Just don’t forget to install TWRP, a customized Kindle Fire recovery utility, before your experiments with this ICS build. BradLinder of Liliputing has also another video that can help you to install the pre-alpha ICS build:

There’s also a detailed instruction published at Liliputing, so the process of transforming Kindle Fire into Ice Cream Sandwich tablet can be accomplished much easier than it may sound out of the explanations here.

The ICS on Kindle Fire project goes in parallel with previous efforts of g1011999 on building ICS.

The post Kindle Fire Runs Ice Cream Sandwich appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

Kindle Fire Rooted Again: How To Instructions

Alexander Udalov — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 14:49:22 +0000

It was expected sooner than later, but now it’s become reality. By hard work and determination of Android Police’s own in-house hacker named (appropriately) Justin Case and helpers like Vashypooh, Trevor Eckhart, and IOMoster of TeamWin, the rooting of Amazon’s Kindle Fire has become possible once again. This is after Amazon’s firmware upgrade to version 6.2.1 killed root privileges. In an exclusive post to Android Police, restoring the root on Kindle Fire looks like this:

Download jcase’s Kindle Fire root app.

Run the root app and click “Root.”
On your PC, in a command prompt, type “adb root.”
Download Superuser.
Unzip Superuser.
In the command prompt, type:

adb remount
adb push su /system/xbin/su
adb shell chown 0.0 /system/xbin/su
adb shell chmod 06755 /system/xbin/su
adb install com.noshufou.android.su-1.apk
adb reboot

Sure, it might take an app called SuperOneClick to un-root your Fire first, but according to first happy customers the procedure works fine if the instructions are followed closely and with an understanding of what each command does. So far, users need to know how to use ADB debug mode to clean your Fire from previous rooting attempts, if there were any. Then, the TWRP recovery utility might be much help pre-installed, to be on the safe side when some mistakes, mistypes, or otherwise bungled permissions would result in boot loops, or other sorts of soft-bricking your Kindle Fire.

Good discussions of this procedure helped by Justin Case himself can be found at rootzwiki. The next firmware silent “upgrade” via OTA may break this root again, but for those Fire users who would decide to take path to CyanogenMod 7 and Ice Cream Sandwich from here there will be no more sneaky upgrades from Amazon. The rooting procedure has got the name BurritoRoot, the implications of which we described earlier.

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BurritoRoot For Kindle Fire

Alexander Udalov — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 03:06:42 +0000

A prominent member of the hacker community, named Justin Case, has challenged Amazon’s Lab 126 coders with this message published at XDA-Developers:

Open Letter to Lab126/Amazon. Please consider leaving the ‘feature’ BurritoRoot takes advantage of in future firmware. The method we used is very safe, and not abuse-able by malicious applications. Leaving it, will lessen the risks of public disclosure of dangerous alternatives, which lead to warranty returns.

(aka) I have a root for your next release if you fix this, and it isn’t nearly as safe. I am willing to disclose it privately if you agree to leaving the BurritoRoot ‘feature’ intact.

Justin Case

As it is, the message shows much of the anger of an overworked hacker. In more neutral words, Justin Case asks to leave ‘intact’ the feature he used as a base for his root exploit of the last Kindle Fire firmware update, namely 6.2.1. BurritoRoot was shown to work on every Kindle Fire ROM update, except for 6.0. Naturally, with the release of 6.2.1 automatic OTA upgrade, it’s not a problem for users of early Kindle Fires: they can be rooted after receiving an upgrade from Amazon.

Justin Case also dares to challenge Amazon that ‘just in case’ Amazon would try to ‘fix’ the feature, his current root exploit is based upon, he has another root exploit he feels he would be compelled to release.

As it stands now, the BurritoRoot for Kindle Fire requires a rather convoluted procedure that takes ADB debug mode and host computer settings to accomplish. However, rooting a Kindle Fire is obviously not an end in itself: it’s more like a path to putting a custom CyanogenMod 7 (Gingerbread) firmware, or early build of custom CyanogenMod 9 (Ice Cream Sandwich). Alternative firmwares may also include an overclocked kernel 2.6.35.7 by intersectRaven.

It’s still worth mentioning that rooting your Kindle Fire may void your warranty, if you won’t find a safe way to ‘un-root’ the device and roll it back to stock Amazon’s firmware. Bricking a Fire, or boot-looping it are also quite possible outcomes if your skills in handling ADB debug mode may occur insufficient for these tasks proposed by Justin Case and others.

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