How to root Amazon Fire Kids Edition tablet

We’ve covered how to add Google Play to your Amazon Fire Kids Edition tablet, but that’s not rooting your tablet. Root allows Program A to edit Program B’s data, and otherwise have direct access that the Android sandboxing of programs prevents.

Why do you want to root Amazon Fire Kids Edition tablet?

There’s nothing illegal in rooting, however you might void your warranty and get the tablet in such a state that you cannot easily recover it.

Amazon is probably not going to pitch a fit over the root status of a $49 tablet since they’re selling you a service yearly at about $50 a year, but they might if you bricked it.

Many people have been the unfortunate victim of Amazon’s inability to function correctly. From having a kid’s profile and all game achievements wiped out by an update or licensing bug, to something else here to make it sound more than that one issue that happened twice. Yeah, that’s all I can think of at the moment.

As only a rooted device allows a program to touch another program, you need to be rooted for programs such as Titanium Backup to function and keep snapshots of your kid’s Fire Kids Tablet safe on an external SD card or in cloud storage.

It’s also just cool.

There’s not a lot of motivation to root a Fire Kids Tablet. It can’t tether, root provides few enhancements other than backups and some tweaks, but it can be useful if you want the tablet to do something that it’s not supposed to. Also you might be able to complete step 8 of the adding Google Play to your kid’s fire without using a third party app.

How do I root?

While there may be a less sketchy looking way, the only way I found that worked involved Kingroot for Windows and Android. Just the Android version last check was not able to do the full exploit. Times may have changed.

Kingroot also allows for easy unrooting, which I did and had no issues with updating the tablet to new OS releases.

What about all these other sites that say I can do it this way or that way or the other?

Try it. If it works please comment and let me know where a different method is (really, I’m not being sarcastic.) I’ve got no stake in Kingroot and would prefer to know the steps that are being performed on my tablet.

Rooting is a moving target. Every method to root a device in a couple of steps where that device was not meant to allow root gets patched. EG: every HTC device allows you to root them, however the steps always involve unlocking the bootloader, wiping the data so you couldn’t theoretically be hacking the device, and then installing a root manager/superuser app.

If you can exploit a bug to gain root, said bug will be patched next maintenance release.

Running roots, temp roots, one click roots would allow a device to be infected with a virus whereas the Android sandbox currently stops them. It would allow an app to pull your OAUTH cookies and send them to insert country you dislike here which would allow them to tweet and Facebook in your name.  Basically one click roots are discouraged as the end of times.

Amazon doesn’t want their tablets rooted. This is for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is making sure you’re trapped in the Amazon ecosystem and cannot send commission money to Google.

In order to root an Amazon tablet you have to exploit a vulnerability usually. These vulnerabilities are patched revision to revision. Kingroot works on the PC and the Android tablet and tag teams a set of vulnerabilities that allow you to force a superuser app and binary onto the device.

Kingroot keeps its vulnerability stockpile up to date and does… something… not entirely sure what.. which is unsettling.

Unsettling?

It’s a kid’s tablet… so hopefully they’re not installing backdoors to watch your five year old picking boogers. I’m actually pretty sure they’re not, at least as of the last use of it I had, but when you don’t know what the app you’re installing does, well, you don’t know what it does.

Unfortunately that’s pretty much the case with all apps out there. Give them access to the mic and as far as you know they’re creating a calendar of when you’re in and out of the house and emailing it to a burglar. If they have access to the network (almost every app does,) they know when the tablet is home. If they’ve got access to the camera, they probably know what you or your kid looks like.

Root just means that an app can have all those accesses and access everything your tablet can without asking for it.

Should I root my Tablet?

Not unless you have a reason to, or think you will have a reason to and that Amazon might make the tablets impossible to crack.

You do not have to have root in order to install Google Play Services and Youtube on your tablet, but you might soon.