It was reported at XDA-Developers forum yesterday that the OTA (OTA=Over-The-Air) update for the Amazon Kindle Fire tablet to its 6.2.1 version of firmware has killed its rooting procedure, a so called SuperOneClick. It’s worth mentioning that rooting in itself is not the real target for all those tinkerers at XDA-Developers and elsewhere. It’s just a tool that facilitates running alternative firmware on the Fire, namely CyanogenMod 7 and coming CyanogenMod 9 (based on Android Open Source Project for Ice Cream Sandwich). It improves handling the device in its sideloading mode, and, conversely, sideloading some system apps might take rooting and superuser privileges essential.
The SuperOneClick app for Kindle Fire that stopped working for its intended purpose is just a single, simple to use tool among the more demanding and convoluted procedures of manual rooting. Like it happened before with many smartphones and tablets, the routines of re-rooting (or rooting again for your device, after the firmware update push) will be found sooner rather than later.
The pesky silent OTA updates irritate anyone who has rooted their Fires previously, modified their firmware, and otherwise enhanced their experience with the tablet. As always, development is conducted to solve the problem of losing root at the next Firmware OTA upgrade. Simple tools are known, such as block the “hosts” file to stop Amazon’s updating servers from reaching your Fire. A DeviceUpdater system app can be killed, renamed, or deleted. FOTA (FOTA= Firmware OTA) Kill app was brought in to the arsenal. But cat and mice games are continuing.
As for now, a pre-rooted stock 6.2.1 update is taking its shape. When the development will be finished, it will become another backup plan for tinkerers of the Kindle Fire. Then, no need to write off SuperOneClick and other user-friendly rooting tools just yet: these utilities are tweaked constantly to address any threats of silent “un-rooting” OTA updates.
As for the update itself, you won’t hear many good words about improvements that this update can supposedly offer: the base of it is still Android 2.3, and not Android 4.0.3, or even Android 3.2 which are both more suited for a tablet-sized device than this phone-centric and ageing Gingerbread. Your mileage may vary though, and some high-bandwidth videos on your Fire may even stop stuttering.
mobilemag
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