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I am thinking on getting a Kindle Fire due to the good reviews and the price tag. I see that there are a lot of links showing you how to root your Kindle Fire so that you can have regular Android OS and be able to benefit from the Android Market.

My objective is to be able to have both worlds running side by side. I was planning following these tutorials:

http://www.gizmowatch.com/install-android-sdk-root-kindle-fire.html

http://www.androidauthority.com/how-to-root-the-amazon-kindle-fire-36015/

My questions are as follows:

  1. If I root Kindle Fire, do I lose all the functionality that the Fire was designed to do?

  2. If I root Kindle Fire, do I lose access to the Amazon Appstore?

  3. Will following this instructions above leave me in a situation where I cannot revert back to the original functionality?

  4. Does anybody know if the Fire will be upgradable to ICS (Android 4.0)?

  5. Why is Kindle Fire running a 2.3 version of Android rather than the latest Honeycomb?

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  1. The Kindle Fire will function as it normally would, but you cannot use the Video on Demand service while you are rooted.
  2. The Amazon Appstore functions fine even if you're rooted.
  3. You can revert to the "original functionality" with the "Unroot" button provided by SuperOneClick.
  4. Nobody knows this but Amazon.
  5. Honeycomb was not open-sourced when the Fire was being developed, and Amazon forked the Android open source code to create the Kindle Fire's codebase. Thus, the Fire was built using the newest available source at the time of development - Gingerbread.

I rooted my Kindle Fire ~30 minutes after I got it, largely because I wanted access to the Market but also to ease any development I do with it. Everything works like normal except VOD (as noted above).

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    Thanks a lot for the response, this is music to my ears. I am getting the Fire.
    – Viriato
    Dec 17, 2011 at 6:23
  • After you "revert" with SuperOneClick, will the Android Market continue to function? Or can I only have either Video On Demand or Android Market working at once?
    – Vaccano
    Mar 11, 2012 at 19:11
  • @Vaccano: Easiest thing to do is use OTA Rootkeeper to temp unroot when you wan to use VoD. I'm not positive, but I think the Market will still function, though an OTA could break it (the Market doesn't need su, so it seems like it should still work). Mar 11, 2012 at 20:05

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