Android 4.1 Jelly Bean released for the Kindle Fire

[Master Devwi]

An unofficial version of Android 4.1 Jelly Bean is now available for the most popular Android tablet on the market: the Kindle Fire. A developer known as Hashcode has managed to port Google’s latest and greatest OS over to Amazon’s popular tablet, albeit in a somewhat early state.

Hashcode’s current release doesn’t support hardware acceleration for video, and WiFi can occasionally be problematic. Naturally, Jelly Bean’s voice commands and camera-related features won’t work either, since the Kindle Fire hardware lacks a microphone and cameras. That being said, everything else works quite well.

The default Kindle Fire OS is a heavily modified version of Android 2.3 Gingerbread, complete with native support for Amazon services like Kindle, the Amazon Appstore for Android, Amazon Instant Video, Amazon MP3, Audible, and more. Most of these are available as standalone apps on other Android devices, with the exception of Amazon Instant Video.

If you’re willing to take the risk and try out Jelly Bean on the Kindle Fire for yourself, the full instructions can be found at the source. The short version, however, is to simply download Hashcode’s Jelly Bean .zip file, run the popular Kindle Fire Utility to unlock the device and install either TWRP or ClockworkMod Recovery, and flash the ROM.

Do you like putting custom ROMs on your Android devices, or do you prefer the stock OS?

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[Olley]

Seems like a complete waste of time in this case given the hardware isn't up to the software. The kid should have worked getting 4.1 onto something like the tegra 3 Asus Transformers or the Toshiba Excite with Tegra 3. THAT would have been worth it.

[saratoga]

Originally Posted by Olley

Seems like a complete waste of time in this case given the hardware isn't up to the software.

Why do you say that? Aside from the missing microphone, its very similar hardware to the galaxy nexus.

Originally Posted by Olley

The kid should have worked getting 4.1 onto something like the tegra 3 Asus Transformers or the Toshiba Excite with Tegra 3.

People can only work on the hardware they own. Its nonsense to say that someone "should" work on some device they probably can't actually work on.