As usual, Amazon is offering deep discounts on Fire tablets for the holiday shopping season. And as usual, some folks would like Amazon’s tablets better if they worked a bit more like other Android tablets. Amazon Fire tablets run a fork of Android called Fire OS. That means they have an Amazon-designed user interface and ship […]
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Playing with Fire: Hacking Amazon’s $50 Fire tablet
The Amazon Fire Tablet may not be one the best tablets money can buy, but more than a year after its launch, the $50 Amazon Fire is still one of the cheapest tablets that’s actually good enough to consider worth buying. But there is one big catch: while the tablet runs a customized version of Android, it’s […]
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Don’t like Windows 10? You can roll back (within 30 days)
So you’ve taken up Microsoft on its offer to upgrade to Windows 10 for free. How’s that working out for you? For the most part Windows 10 should be able to run on just about any hardware that could run Windows 7 or later. But if you’re running into problems, Microsoft included an escape chute: […]
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Sony releases recovery mode firmware for (some) unlocked Xperia phones
Like most large companies that design Android smartphones, Sony customizes the software that ships on its Xperia line of phones with a custom user interface, a few special apps, and other changes that make the software on Sony phones look a little different from the software that runs on a Nexus phone. But for folks […]
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Google might make it harder to write to Android system partition, even with root
Google appears to be working on tightening security in future versions of Android by essentially blocking write access to the /system partition… even if you have a rooted phone. You’ll still be able to write to the partition by rebooting into a custom recovery, but it means that you might need to reboot your device […]
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Nexus 7 news: Wireless charging, faster than a Nexus 4, Root
Google’s new Nexus 7 tablet hit the streets this week. And almost immediately folks figured out how to install a custom recovery and root the tablet. Meanwhile, some folks tore apart the 2013 Nexus 7 tablet to see if it’s really what’s on the inside that counts, and they found a few surprises under the […]
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Titanium Backup lets you make a flashable ZIP with all of your apps
Titanium Backup has long been one of the most useful Android apps for users who root their devices and tinker with custom ROMs. It lets you backup all the apps and data on your device and restore from that backup — even after switching from a stock ROM to CyanogenMod, AOKP, or other custom firmware. […]
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Nabi 2 tablet for kids gets unofficial root, Google apps, custom recovery
The Nabi 2 is a $200 tablet aimed at kids. It has a rugged case and a custom user interface and app store designed to make Android simpler (and safer) to use for young children. But under the hood the Nabi 2 is a pretty powerful tablet. It has an NVIDIA Tegra 3 quad-core processor, […]
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Rooting the UG802 Android Mini PC, installing custom recovery
The UG802 is a USB thumb drive-sized computer-on-a-stick. It has a Rockchip RK3066 dual core processor, 1GB of RAM, 4GB of storage, HDMI and USB ports, and runs Android 4.0 software. You can pick one up for under $70, plug in a monitor, keyboard, and mouse and use it like a cheap desktop computer. But […]
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MK802 II Android 4.0 Mini PC recovery tools
One of the reasons the MK802 and other mini PCs with Allwinner A10 chips have proven popular is because they’re pretty hacker-friendly. These little computers tend to sell for between $50 and $100, come with Android software pre-loaded, and often include root access right out of the box. You can also load Ubuntu, Fedora, Puppy, […]