Shopping for a new tablet this holiday season?
Now you can turn your old Amazon Kindle into a new Google Nexus 7 or Nexus 10.
An Android Jellybean 4.2.1 hack from XDA Developers user Hashcode turns the original Kindle Fire with 512 MB of RAM into a near-exact copy of the Google tablets.
It allows the aging Kindle Fire to run the same operating system, programs and apps as the newer Android tablets, a huge boost in performance an capabilities from the forked Android 2.3 OS it originally shipped with.
Not all the features work flawlessly, though, mostly due to the original Kindle Fire's older hardware. You'll have to forgo the Swype keyboard, microphone (though sound output still works), multi-user profiles, deep-sleep mode and USB camera support.
Reports say all the new features hurt battery life, though, but there are tradeoffs for salvaging your old hardware.
But Hashcode, or some other enterprising developer could come up with an update to address all these issues. Or they might not-that's the beauty and risk of open-source development.
The hands-on video shows the hardware acceleration for HD YouTube and Netflix videos works well, as do web-browsing and games.
Of course, the original Kindle Fire has a smaller screen resolution than even the Nexus 7, and the older hardware is bulkier than the sleek new tablets, but it's a great option for repurposing an old Kindle Fire instead of retiring it to gather dust in a closet.
The new ROM only works on the original Kindle Fire, not the Kindle Fire that came with 1 GB of RAM and Android 4.0, the Kindle Fire HD or the Kindle Fire HD 8.9.
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