With the Linux 3.0 kernel, the Kindle Fire can finally be an Ice Cream Sandwich tablet
As most of you probably already know, the Amazon Kindle Fire has been an incredibly well selling Android-based reader. It is good at what it does, but when I reviewed the device a few months ago I found out one important thing: in stock form, the Fire is not a standard Android tablet, but a gateway to Amazon's content.
Of course, as is typical within the Android community, developers soon set to work fixing that problem. They had an alpha build of Android 4.0 running late last year, but it wasn't yet in a useful or usable state for most users. I've been using builds of Ice Cream Sandwich on my Kindle Fire for a few months now, and I think that time has finally come.
The software was mostly there with the release of the Android 3.0 kernel for the device, but I decided to wait until everything including HD games and Netflix was working to endorse the build as being ready for general use. You can see a quick tour of how well everything works in the video above, or if you have a Kindle and want to get some Ice Cream Sandwich for yourself, head over to this xda-developers thread which will get you started with CyanogenMod 9 and the 3.0 kernel. If you aren't sure how to do all this, just keep an eye out for the Kindle Fire to Android 4.0 tutorial that will be published in the coming weeks.
