We now have a very basic Android application. Let us name our demo app as testKindleHDApp. Under Eclipse, Click File->Create New Android Application… Once booting is complete, you will see a home screen depending on the image you have launched.īuilding for Kindle Fire is as simple as building an Android application. You can see the Kindle Fire OS is booting up. Leave the defaults and click “Launch” to launch the emulator. Now, you can choose the Amazon AVD and click “Start…” to launch the emulator.Ī window with launch options will pop up. Select a Kindle Fire Device and click “Create AVD”.Ĭlick OK and your Kindle Fire virtual device is created. You will see a window titled Amazon AVD Launcher (similar to Android Virtual Device Manager). If on Windows, go to AVDLauncherWindows directory. Now, navigate to the /extras/amazon folder.
Go to the command line and navigate to the Android SDK folder. The next steps involve working with the Kindle Fire emulator. Extract the emulator.exe, emulator-arm.exe and emulator-x86.exe to c:androidsdktools folder and restart Eclipse. You can download updated Windows emulator components from. You will need to restart Eclipse after the installation to enable it. Once you do this, you can install the Intel Hardware Acceleration Execution Manager. To help speed up things in your development environment, you need to enable virtualization extensions on your PC. Improving Your Development Environment Productivity Once the installation is complete, restart Eclipse. This will install the necessary packages and prepare us to build applications for all generations of Kindle Fire.
Google USB Driver (if you do not have the latest version).Android Support Library (if you do not have the latest version).Android SDK Platform-tools (if you do not have the latest version).Android SDK Tools (if you do not have the latest version).After the refresh, select the following packages to install/update. The Android SDK manager will refresh the list of packages. When prompted for a URL, enter and click OK, and then Close. Navigate to Tools -> Manage Add-On Sites... Once Eclipse is launched, go to Windows -> Android SDK Manager. Choose the location for your workspace and click OK. Next, start Eclipse by running eclipse.exe. I recommend that you download to an easy-to-discover path like c:android.Īfter extraction, the folder will look like the screenshot below.
Upon completion of the download, extract the contents of the ZIP file to a local folder. Īs with the Java SDK, ensure that the Android SDK matches the bitness of your operating system and Java SDK. Next, we need to install the Android SDK which is available from. Make sure you download the SDK that matches the bitness of your Operating system (32-bit or 64-bit). In addition, we would need the Kindle Fire emulators.įirst, we need to install the Java SDK, which can be downloaded from To build applications for Kindle Fire, we mostly use the same tools as the Android building environment – Java SDK, and Eclipse.
A PC running Windows 7 ( or higher) or MAC OS X 10.7.Intel processor, which supports virtualization – To support Kindle Fire emulators, we need a PC with Intel processor that supports virtualization extensions (VT-x).To get started with building applications, here are a few requisites. System Requirements Hardware Requirements
In fact, per Amazon, most of the Android applications (76% of the applications they tested) can work on Kindle Fire without needing any change or development effort.Īmazon offers additional features – like In-App Purchasing, GameCircle and Mobile Ads to enable developers a richer customer experience and monetization opportunities. The first gen Kindle Fire devices are based on Android Ice Cream Sandwich (API level 15) and the second gen Kindle Fire (Kindle Fire HD) devices are based on Android Jelly Bean (API level 17).įor developers, this implies that building applications targeting Amazon’s Kindle Fire is similar to building an Android application. In fact, it is very compatible for existing Android applications, which is customized to remove native access to the Google app ecosystem. While the look and feel of the Kindle Fire tablet appears distinctly different from other mobile operating systems, it is actually Android in disguise. Amazon’s Kindle Fire (and its variants) marks the entry of Amazon into touch-enabled mobile computing devices.