Feel left out by not buying the Kindle Fire from Amazon, but you happen to have an original 7-inch Samsung Galaxy Tab? If you’re feeling adventurous enough, you can use the Kindle Fire system files from the XDA Developers forum and load them onto your OG Galaxy Tab.
photo credit: Kevin Tofel, GigaOM Mobile
Kevin Tofel over at GigaOM Mobile details his experiences in doing this, so you can see what’s in store for you before attempting to do any of this hackery yourself.
photo credit: Kevin Tofel, GigaOM Mobile
The bookshelf-styled UI of the Kindle Fire is essentially an app launcher that can be loaded onto the Galaxy Tab, or any other Android tablet. It works a lot like installing any other 3rd-party launcher app. However, there are added benefits to using the Kindle Fire’s “app launcher”. It enables your Android tablet to access Kindle e-books and magazines. This goes beyond just using the Android Kindle app because some content — in Kevin’s case, a certain digital magazine — is not yet available for non-Kindle-Fire devices.
photo credit: Kevin Tofel, GigaOM Mobile
Additionally, as we reported before, Amazon’s Instant Video streaming app is among the “ripped” Kindle Fire apps that can work on other Android tablets. Since the Galaxy Tab has a 7-inch screen with the same resolution as the Kindle Fire, the streaming video app works best on it. You do have to use a workaround to log in to your Amazon Prime account to get access to the free videos, since the app doesn’t have an easily-accessible login screen. Just try to rent a video in the Instant Video app, and that will force the app to popup the login dialog box. After logging in, cancel the video rental. Your login credentials will be stored in the app from then on.
The Kindle Fire-optimized Amazon Store app seems to also be worth installing since it has a nicer interface than the regular Android app.
Not everything translates well from the Kindle Fire to the Galaxy Tab, though. For some reason the icons and fonts are the wrong size, get scrunched and overlap, even though the Galaxy Tab has the same screen resolution as the Kindle Fire. Amazon’s Silk Browser doesn’t seem to play nice with the Galaxy Tab. Also, the bookshelf launcher app is a bit crashtastic on the Galaxy Tab, probably due to some server dependencies that the Kindle Fire has. Likely these issues may get ironed out as people keep hacking on these files, but it is something to be aware of in case you’re going to take the plunge.
Read on more at the source link below for Kevin’s full blow-by-blow account of turning a Galaxy Tab into a Kindle Fire.
Via GigaOM Mobile
