CrunchGear

CrunchGear

Link to TechCrunch » GadgetsTechCrunch

Amazon’s Kindle Fire Gets A Taste Of Jelly Bean Thanks To Beta ROM

Posted: 11 Jul 2012 11:21 AM PDT

jellybeankindle

Well, today’s shaping up to be a banner day for Kindle Fire owners. If the news of some nifty features for Kindle Fire games isn’t enough to get owners hot and bothered, how about a nice dose of Android 4.1 Jelly Bean?

Android developers and hackers have been working feverishly ever since Google released Jelly Bean to the Android Open Source Project repository two days ago, and it wasn’t long before a ROM for the Kindle Fire was pushed out into the world.

Needless to say, things are still a little… rough at this point. The folks on the xda-developer forums noted early on that the flashed Fires had trouble connecting to Wi-Fi networks (a fix was soon found, though it requires users to be handy with the Android Debug Bridge command line tool, and some confusion about which version of the Google Apps installer package to use left some users without access to the Google Play Store.

Then again, the process of tweaking and fiddling until everything (more or less) works well has always been part of the fun for a certain set of Android fans. Putting those issues aside, everything else seems to run smoothly enough given the Fire’s underwhelming spec sheet. Of course, I imagine not everyone reading this is feeling up to the challenge of giving their Kindle Fire a Jelly Bean makeover, so here’s a video demo courtesy to Lilliputing to give you a better idea of what the newly-flashed device is capable of.

Amazon Pumps Up Kindle Fire Gaming With GameCircle, Opens APIs To Developers

Posted: 11 Jul 2012 07:10 AM PDT

temple-run-achievements

Amazon has just announced a bit of good news for avid Kindle Fire gamers and developers — the company has been working to revamp the gaming experience on their wallet-conscious tablet and have decided to share the fruits of their labor.

Starting today, developers can use Amazon’s GameCircle APIs to implement a host of new features in their Kindle Fire games. Considering how many other console and mobile gaming platforms already support them, it should come as no surprise that support for achievements is on that list of features. Also on deck is leaderboard functionality, which allows users to see how they stack up to their rivals without having to pop out of the game in question.

So far, it all sounds very Game Center-y (though Amazon could do worse than to take cues from Apple), but GameCircle has one last trick up its sleeve. Perhaps the most immediately impressive feature is GameCircle’s sync functionality, which automatically saves a player’s progress to the cloud. As such, players are able to pick up where they left off even if they’ve had to re-install the game in question or switch devices.

It's an interesting play to see from Amazon, and arguably it's one they need to make. The Seattle-based retail giant is about to face some very stiff competition in the low-cost tablet space thanks to Google's Nexus 7, but Amazon's content and media ecosystem is still perhaps their strongest differentiator. With GameCircle, Amazon is trying to improve a very specific segment of that ecosystem, though it's unclear at this point how many game developers will flock to their APIs.

Of course, it’s very possible that GameCircle’s impact isn’t intended to end with the company’s tablets. Rumors that Amazon is working on a new smartphone are making the rounds with renewed intensity — even the Wall Street Journal got in on the fun recently, claiming that the Amazon phone will sport a four- or five-inch screen. Though details are still sparse at this point, don’t be surprised if whatever Amazon is working on ends up playing nice with GameCircle too.
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)