One of the greatest perks of using Android devices is their hackability. No other platform makes it so easy to install a variety of custom firmwares, apps, and tweaks that wouldn’t be available out-of-the-box. The latest darling of the development community is Amazon’s Kindle Fire. There is now a pre-alpha build of Ice Cream Sandwich available to be flashed to the tablet. However, despite the obvious temptation, we don’t recommend most users to do this — yet.
The latest version of Android and the best budget tablet: it sounds like the perfect match. Someday soon it will be. But the current build of Ice Cream Sandwich for the Fire just isn’t there yet; it actually isn’t meant to be.
Members of the development community feed off of each other by releasing early pre-alpha, alpha, beta, and pre-alpha-alpha-pre-pre-beta builds (okay, maybe not the last one). When your work is open-source, it benefits everyone to release incremental updates. Others can test it, provide feedback, fork their own versions, and learn from your work. It’s a win for everyone.
Except, perhaps, for casual users. Every time the development community does something amazing (like ICS on the Kindle Fire), it’s a newsworthy achievement. Blogs and Twitter light up, spreading the news that this incredible work has been done. But that’s where the problems start. Users who have no advanced hacking experience opine that “if it’s good enough for the blogs, it’s good enough for me.” Let the bricks commence.
The Ice Cream Sandwich ROM is moving along rapidly. It’s Ice Cream Sandwich, and it’s mostly functional. Unfortunately the things that aren’t working are crucial. Sound only works in spurts. Video is choppy at best, and graphics acceleration isn’t there yet. Some Market apps will error out when you try to download them. Even the touchscreen is having problems.
If you want to take the plunge and install ICS, knock yourself out. Just know that — unless you’re advanced enough of a hacker to know exactly what you’re doing — you might be putting your $200 tablet at risk just to pre-alpha test a buggy ROM.
Whether it’s in a day, a week, or a month, we’ll let you know when there is an Ice Cream Sandwich port that’s stable enough for most of us to flash.
Transaction Systems Architects Total System Services Tns Tibco Software Tibco Software
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