Folks have been hacking the Nintendo Switch and running Linux on it for nearly a year and a half. A few months ago someone started porting Windows 10 to run on the portable game console. And now you can run Android on a Switch. Switchroot LineageOS 15.1 from basically turns the Switch into an Android […]
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Amazon’s 2019 Fire 7 tablet can be rooted, unlocked, and more
Amazon updated its entry-level Fire 7 tablet this year with a new model sporting a faster processor and twice as much storage as its predecessor. But two things haven’t changed. First, prices for Amazon’s Fire 7 tablet still start at $50 (or less during one of Amazon’s frequent sales). And second, the 9th-gen Fire 7 […]
Lilbits 355: Intel’s next-gen low-power chips coming in 2020, better graphics in tow
We already knew Intel’s follow up to the Gemini Lake line of cheap, low-power Celeron and Pentium processors would probably be code-named Elkhart Lake and that the new chips could pack way more performance, possibly by combining high-performance “Sunny Cove” CPU cores, lower-power “Tremont” cores, and Intel Gen11 graphics. Now, if a leaked product roadmap […]
Amazon Fire HD 10 (2017) hack: bootloader unlock, root, and recovery tools
It’s been a busy few months for Amazon Fire tablet hackers. After discovering a vulnerability affecting a group of MediaTek processors, independent developers figured out how to unlock the bootloader and root the latest Amazon Fire HD 8 and Fire 7 tablets… and then the 2nd-gen Amazon Fire TV Stick for good measure. Now it’s […]
2nd-gen Amazon Fire TV can be rooted (again)
It’s been a few years since hackers discovered how to root Amazon’s 2nd-gen Fire TV the first time. But Amazon patched the vulnerability used to gain root access with a software update, starting a bit of a cat and mouse game (another root method was later discovered and then lost due to another over-the-air software […]
New Fire HD 8 bootloader unlock method doesn’t require opening the case
It’s been possible to unlock the bootloader and root the latest Amazon Fire HD 8 tablet since January. But up until recently the only known method for doing that involved prying open the tablet’s case, identifying points on the motherboard, and shorting them to enter bootrom mode. But now there’s an easier way. Xda-developers forum […]
2nd-gen Amazon Fire TV Stick hack: Unlock the bootloader, install custom recovery
Amazon’s 2nd-gen Fire TV Stick (the 1080p model that has a list price of $40) is powered by a MediaTek processor, much like Amazon’s Fire tablets. So it should come as no surprise that the same exploit that hackers have been using to unlock the bootloaders and root the latest 7 inch and 8 inch […]
Bootloader unlock and root for Amazon Fire 7 tablets (5th-gen and 7th-gen)
Less than a month after hackers figured out how to unlock the bootloader and root the 8th-gen Amazon Fire HD 8 tablet (the 2018 model), there’s now a method for doing that with Amazon’s cheaper 7 inch tablets. Xda-developers forum member k4y0z has posted instructions for unlocking the 5th-gen and 7th-gen Amazon Fire tablets (the […]
Amazon Fire HD 8 (2018): You can root it and unlock the bootloader
Amazon’s 2018 Fire HD 8 tablet offers pretty good bang for the buck. The $80 tablet has an 8 inch, 1280 x 800 pixel IPS display, a 1.3 GHz quad-core processor, 1.5GB of RAM, and 16GB of storage plus a microSD card reader. You can pay a bit more for a 32GB model, or you […]
Pretty much every recent Windows Phone is now hackable
Microsoft has abandoned Windows 10 Mobile for the most part, but if you have a relatively recent Windows Phone it may now be possible to hack it. A tool called WPInternals already made it possible to jailbreak or root most Lumia-branded smartphones that shipped with Windows software. But now gus3300 and Rafael Rivera have demonstrated […]