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Entries Tagged as 'Kindle Fire'

ADW Launcher Replaces the Kindle Fire HD Home Screen

February 24th, 2013 by Nate Hoffelder · Kindle Fire, tips and tricks → 2 Comments

Screenshot_2013-02-24-11-54-30When Amazon launched the Kindle Fire HD last fall they made sure that you couldn’t escape their showroom/billboard, and one of the tricks they pulled was blocking any competing apps that would protect you from Amazon’s adverts.

For example, none of the home screen apps I tried to install last Fall were able to run on the Kindle Fire HD, even though they were properly installed.

But today that changes. I’ve just come across a new version of ADW Launcher, the popular free home screen app. This version of the app will work on the KFHD, and it can be downloaded to your KFHD or to your PC and then transferred via a USB cable.
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Kindle Fire HD Update Adds Camera App, Swype

December 6th, 2012 by Nate Hoffelder · Amazon, Kindle Fire → 3 Comments

Amazon got a lot of attention yesterday for Kindle FreeTime, the new paid service which lets kids access a curated selection of content, but that’s not all they did.

They’ve just rolled out a new update for the 7″ Kindle Fire HD, and it adds a couple useful features:
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Kindle FreeTime Adds Parental Controls to the Kindle Fire HD, But There’s a Catch

October 25th, 2012 by Nate Hoffelder · Amazon, Kindle Fire → 4 Comments

Amazon’s long promised update for the Kindle Fire HD is finally rolling out today, and it looks like it’s not going to be all puppies and gumdrops. While I am still waiting on the update, one member of MobileRead Forums already got it and he is not happy.

It seems that the parental controls in Kindle FreeTime are quite good at limiting how kids can access content bought from Amazon, but Amazon’s engineers don’t seem t have realized that Amazon is not the font of all knowledge.
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The 7″ Kindle Fire HD Has a Locked Bootloader

September 16th, 2012 by Nate Hoffelder · Amazon, hardware news, Kindle Fire → 11 Comments

Yesterday I reported on the KFHD’s omnipresent ads, and today I have even worse news. There are early reports coming in from the XDA Forums and elsewhere that the new KFHD and the 2nd gen Kindle Fire both have locked bootloaders. Hackers have already been looking at the update released Friday and from what they can tell Amazon has locked down the KFHD.

For those who don’t follow the intricacies of Android hardware, this is not good news.
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