Lilbits: Install Google Play on Amazon Fire tablets, postmarketOS update, and a new color ePaper display kit

This week a lot of folks have been unwrapping Amazon Fire tablets, setting them up… and figuring out that some of the apps and games you want to run on them aren’t available out of the box.

Fortunately there are a bunch of ways to make an Amazon tablet more useful. You can sideload applications that aren’t available in the Amazon Appstore. Or you can even install the Google Play Store and add a custom launcher application to make an Amazon tablet feel more like a standard Android tablet… even though it’s running Amazon’s fork of Android called FireOS.

In today’s tech news roundup, I’ve got links to some of the articles we’ve published over the past few years that describe how to hack an Amazon Fire tablet. And in more recent tech news, the latest release of the postmarketOS mobile Linux distribution brings camera support to some phones that originally shipped with Android, AOOSTAR has a new mini PC with discrete graphics, JSAUX has a new dock for handheld gaming PCs that includes built-in cooling fans, and there’s a new Raspberry Pi Pico 2 W-powered color E Ink display kit.

Amazon Fire Tablet hacking roundup

Amazon’s Fire line of tablets are some of the cheapest Android-based tablets that are worth buying. The Fire HD 8, Fire HD 10, and Fire Max 11 have decent displays, affordable price tags, reasonably good battery life, and performance that’s more than good enough for reading eBooks, streaming videos, surfing the web, or even light gaming.

But while the tablets run an operating system that’s based on Android, Amazon’s FireOS is different in a few important ways. It has a custom user interface designed by Amazon that puts the company’s apps and services front and center. And it ships with the Amazon Appstore instead of the Google Play Store. Not only are fewer apps and games available in Amazon’s store, but if you already paid for an app or service on your Android phone, you’d have to pay again to get it from Amazon… unless you install the Google Play Store yourself. Because an open secret about Amazon’s tablets is that it’s possible to install Google’s app store on them. Keep in mind that there might be some compatibility issues – not all apps distributed in the Play Store will work perfectly on Amazon tablets. But many will.

Here’s a roundup of some of Liliputing’s guides to making Amazon Fire tablets more useful:

• Hack your Amazon Fire tablet with Fire Toolbox (Install Google Play, disable Amazon apps, and more) – This all-in-one tool has a lot of nifty functions. But it may be overkill if you just want to install the Play Store. So check out some of our device-specific guides below:
• How to install Google Play on Amazon Fire tablets (2023) – Originally written for the Fire HD 10 (9th-gen), this article provides step-by-step instructions for installing the Play Store manually or with Fire Toolbox on most recent Amazon Fire tablets.
• How to install the Google Play Store on the Amazon Fire Max 11 (2023) – This guide was written shortly after the Fire Max 11 was released, and provides instructions specifically for installing the Play Store on Amazon’s most powerful current-gen tablet.

• How to install Google Play on 12th-gen Amazon Fire tablets (2022 models running Fire OS 8) – While this guide for installing the Play Store on Fire 7 tablets was first published in 2022, it was updated with information relevant for all tablets running FireOS 8.

• How to sideload apps on Amazon Fire tablets (install apps that aren’t in the Amazon Appstore) – Don’t want to install the Play Store, but have an app or game or two that you want to install? This guide may help.
• Amazon Fire tablets: How to disable the Continue & Discover row on the home screen – Don’t want to replace the home screen & launcher app, but want to reclaim some real estate on the default home screen? This guide can help.

• How to use an SD card with Amazon’s Fire tablets – This guide describes how to use a microSD card as either removable storage, or as if it were internal storage (allowing you to install apps to the SD card, among other things).

Inky Frame 7.3″ is a 7-color ePaper display powered by a Raspberry Pi Pico 2 W [ CNX Software]

Available now for about $94, this kit features a 7.3 inch, 7-color E Ink display with a resolution of 800 x 480 pixels, a Raspberry Pi Pico 2 W, microSD card reader, and battery connector.

v24.12: The One With Androids & Cameras, But It’s Mainline Linux [postmarketOS]

PostmarketOS 24.12 is a mobile OS with a mainline Linux kernel. It brings initial support for using cameras on some phones (Pixel 3A, Fairphone 5, and Pocophone F1), UI updates, an updated wallpaper, and other improvements.

7-in-1 RGB Cooling Docking Station for handhelds [JSAUX]

This $60 docking station is designed for handheld gaming PCs. Sit your handheld in the cradle and use a USB-C connector to add Ethernet, HDMI, and more USB ports… as well as two cooling fans that help keep the PC from overheating while docked.

AOOSTAR GODX is a mini ITX mini PC with Ryzen 9 6900HX and Radeon RX 6600LE [AOOSTAR]

While the hardware is a few generations old at this point, it’s still a lot of power for a compact PC, including discrete graphics and support for up to three 4K/120 Hz displays. Available now for $529 and up, the system also supports up to 64GB of DDR5-4800 dual-channel memory, and two M.2 2280 slots for PCIe 4.0 storage. It has two 2.5 GbE LAN ports as well as USB4, USB 3.2 Type-A, DisplayPort, and HDMI ports, and it measures 200 x 193 x 80mm. Update: The AOOSTAR GODX is available from AliExpress for $503 and up. 

Keep up on the latest headlines by following Liliputing on Bluesky or @[email protected] on Mastodon. You can also follow Liliputing on Threads, Facebook, and X.

#amazon #amazonFire #aoostar #aoostarGodx #dock #eInk #epaper #fireMax11 #fireTablet #fireToolbox #inkyFrame #jsaux #lilbits #miniPc #postmarketos #raspberryPiPico2W

Raspberry Pi Pico 2 W is now available for $7 (RP2350 microcontroller plus WiFi 4 and Bluetooth 5.2)

The Raspberry Pi Pico 2 hit the street this summer as a tiny board designed for Internet of Things (IoT) applications. With a Raspberry Pi RP2350 microcontroller featuring two ARM Cortex-M33 and two Hazard3 RISC-V processor cores, the new model packs more processing power than the original Raspberry Pi Pico that launched in 2021. But it was missing one key feature… until now: wireless connectivity.

Now Raspberry Pi has introduced the new Raspberry Pi Pico 2 W. Available now for $7, it costs $2 more than the version without wireless capabilities, but thanks to an Infineon CYW43439 onboard modem, it adds support for 2.4 GHz 802.11n (WiFi 4) and Bluetooth 5.2.

The rest of the board’s features are identical to those for the version without the modem. That means you can still choose between RISC-V or ARM processors at startup, you still get 520 KB of memory, 8KB of on-chip antifuse one-time programmable memory, and a bunch of other features including:

• 2 x UART
• 2 x SPI controllers
• 2 x I2C controllers
• 24 x PWM channels
• 4 or 8 x ADC channels
• 1 x USB 1.1 controller and PHY with host and device support
• 12 x programmable I/O state machines for custom peripheral support
• 30 or 48 GPIO packages with optional 2MB stacked-in-package QSPI flash storage

The board measures 51 x 21mm (2″ x 0.83″) and the RP2350 microcontroller is software compatible with the older RP2040 used in the original Raspberry Pi Pico, which means that software written for the original should work on the new model.

One big difference between this model and its predecessor? CNX Software reports that when Raspberry Pi released the Raspberry Pi Pico W in mid-2022 it supported WiFi, but not Bluetooth. It took more than half a year for Raspberry Pi to enable Bluetooth support via a software update. But the Raspberry Pi Pico 2 W already supports Bluetooth on day one, allowing you to pair Bluetooth accessories like keyboards and mice.

via Raspberry Pi

#microcontroller #raspberryPi #raspberryPiPico #raspberryPiPico2W