Jailbreaking or Hacking the Kindle PaperWhite
Kindle PaperWhite (PW) users who wish to jailbreak or hack their brand new Amazon Kindle PaperWhite have it quick! This is applicable to newer firmwares such as the 5.1.x and 5.2.0 version. It is a similar jailbreak tool to other existing Kindle jailbreaks, and is available here.
Installation Instructions
- Download the kindle-jailbreak-1.6.N.zip file, and unpack it
- Connect Kindle to your computer
- Locate the *data.stgz* file (in the main directory of the zip)
- Upload it to the root directory of your Kindle
- Go to [HOME] -> [MENU] > Settings -> [MENU] > Restart
- During the reboot you should see a pretty Jailbreak image
- A new ‘book’ will appear in your Home screen to confirm that the device is jailbroken
- Delete the book
- And that’s it, your Kindle is now jailbroken
A word of caution here: the hacks that are installed on a jailbroken PaperWhite may cause bricking. The debricking requires a serial port use, until you discover how to get it into USB Downloader mode. It appears that the device was easily hacked from the look of things.
How Do I check the Firmware Version
From Home, tap Menu and then tap Settings.
On the Settings screen, tap Menu and then select Device Info. Your software version is listed under Firmware Version.
Why jailbreak / hack the Kindle PW
Use your own screen savers – If you’d like your favourite album cover, or a family photo as your screensaver on your Kindle, you could enable this after hacking. Or as in the title picture, display weather information on your Kindle screen. Since it doesn’t draw battery to keep the image on, its actually quite useful to have such static information permanently displayed.
Use your own fonts – Upload fonts from the hack into the linkfonts/fonts directory, restart, and you’ll have a load more fonts to choose from, making reading that much more interesting than thousands of words in Times New Roman.
Of course, most users who wish to buy the Kindle White would probably not end up hacking it, as it is a very good eBook reader but not much, beyond that.