Amazon updates Kindle Fire, breaks root
The Internet retailer releases over-the-air update for its Android tablet, addressing performance and navigation issues.
Amazon released a promised over-the-air update for its Kindle Fire this evening.
Amazon says the update "enhances fluidity and performance, improves touch navigation responsiveness, [and] gives you the option to choose which items display on the carousel." It also includes the option of adding a password lock to Wi-Fi access.
The update, which will be delivered automatically to the devices, comes in response to performance issues with the Internet retailer's Android-powered tablet. Users had complained of problems accessing Wi-Fi networks and the Internet, slow and erratic scrolling, and inefficient apps.
However, users who have rooted the device's operating system will find that the update breaks that modification.
The update comes 10 days after a company spokesman told The New York Times that an over-the-air update would be delivered "in less than two weeks."
The Kindle Fire, which launched on November 14 as a potential "iPad killer," is estimated to have sold more than 3 million units. Millennial Media's November Mobile Mix report found that the number of ad impressions on the Fire grew at an average daily rate of 19 percent, slightly outshining the growth of the first iPad in early 2010.
