Do you know what’s cooler than having your hands on the hot new ereader? It’s having the hot new jailbroken ereader.
Early reports came in last night on MR that the KPW could be jailbroken. According to the first person who tried, his ereader was cracked by one of the same tricks which were developed for the Kindle Touch.
It took me a couple tries to get it right, but I have just confirmed that the new Kindle Paperwhite can indeed be jailbroken. The proof is at right.
As you probably know, the Kindle Paperwhite is Amazon’s second touchscreen equipped ereader. This detail is important because it turns out that Amazon took an important shortcut in designing the KPW. Basically they took the existing design and modified it rather than designing it from scratch.
I had already suspected as much from the early reports that the KPW was running the Kindle OS 5.2 firmware. The Kindle Touch is still running 5.1, and that by itself was a good sign that the same hacks might work.
And at least one of the hacks does work. You can find it over at MobileRead. While all the instructions say Kindle Touch, this is the one I used to jailbreak my Kindle Paperwhite.
If you decide to do this, be sure to use the correct file. Otherwise it won’t work. The file you need to use is called “data.stgz”. There is another file with a similar name and it is very easy to get them confused.
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or one of the retailers on
So what can you do afterwards?
Nothing, yet.
Hopefully one of the epub readers can be slipped in.
I’d kill for coolreader on the KPW.
Hmmmm…. K is based on Linux, but not sure how much revision even a Linux ePub app would need to work on it. But very intriguing idea!
Last I heard, there was a version of fbreader for jailbroken kindles (fbkindle).
Not sure it it was ever updated for the KT but getting either fbreader or coolreader on a kindle would be a praiseworthy hack.
(hint!)
A .epub reader on the paperwhite’s screen would be the absolute best of all possible worlds!
I have to admit I’ve never seen the appeal in jailbreaking devices. But hey, if people want to do so on their own devices, have at it. Just try not to create something that could be used by somebody else to hack my device.
yes, little purpose, less appeal
For iOS, it’s to add more functionality. Such as giving it webOS-like Cards. I would want to JB an iOS device if I owned one.