Amazon's
Silk browser precaches popular websites on Amazon servers in an attempt to
speed up your Web browsing, and until recently it was exclusive to the Kindle
Fire. Here's a guide to hacking it onto your rooted Android smartphone or
tablet.
One
of the coolest features of the Kindle Fire is Amazon's proprietary Silk browser,
an application designed to leverage Amazon's massive server resources by
precaching Web pages and delivering them to you faster--in theory--than any
other browser. It works by preloading all the content (including music, images,
and video) on popular websites to Amazon's remote servers first, and then
delivering the entire package to your mobile device in a single stream of data.
Amazon calls it a "cloud-accelerated" browser, and it's the first of
it's kind.
Sounds
cool, right? Cool enough to try hacking the Silk browser onto your Android
device? If you think so, read on, and we’ll show you how to do it. Before we
dive in, a word of warning: You need a PC running Windows and a compatible
rooted Android device for this hack. The creator of Amazon Silk Port maintains
a device compatibility list that you should check first to ensure that the hack
will work with your device. Remember, even if your device is supported, the
hack is not guaranteed to work, and you run the risk of damaging or destroying
your device.
Browsing
the Amazon website on a Samsung Galaxy Nexus via the Silk browser.
Prep
Your Device
First,
you'll need to download the latest version of the SilkPort file package from a
third-party hosting service. Scan the package for viruses and unpack it into a
directory on your desktop.
Next,
put your Android phone or tablet into Recovery mode. The method for doing this
differs depending on what device you're hacking (for testing purposes, we
successfully hacked a Galaxy Nexus), and especially on whether your device
sports a physical QWERTY keyboard. If it does, you’ll probably need to press
the “up” button on the D-pad (toward the screen) and hold it while pressing the
Power button until the device boots into Recovery mode. You may also be able to
access Recovery mode by pressing and holding the camera button while
simultaneously pressing and holding Volume Down, and then pressing the Power
button.
Touchscreen-only
phones are much easier. In most cases, you can just hold the Volume Down
button, and then press the Power button. On the Galaxy Nexus with Ice Cream
Sandwich, you press and hold both Volume buttons, and then press Power.
Sideload
SilkPort
Once
you get your device into Recovery mode, you can install the Silk browser. To do
so, you'll first need to transfer the SilkPort files to your device, either by
connecting your rooted Android device to your PC via USB or by loading the
SilkPort files directly onto a memory card and loading the card into your
device.
Next,
use an Android file manager app like Root Explorer to copy all the files in the
/lib directory of the Silkport file pack you downloaded to the /system/lib
directory. Once they've been copied to your device, you’ll need to set their
permissions to match the other files in the system/lib directory.
Install
the Silk Browser
The
final step is to install the Silk browser app itself. The SilkPort file package
contains multiple .apk files, and you'll need to install them all on your
device. You should be able to do this by tapping them in your Android file
management app; just make sure that you have Install From Unknown Sources
enabled in your device's Security settings.
Finally,
copy the com.amazon.cloud9-1.apk from the /data/app directory to /system/app.
Reboot your device, and you should be ready to rock with the Silk browser.
Correctly
installing the com.amazon.cloud9-1.apk will allow you to use the Silk browser
as your default browser on any rooted Android device.
So,
how well does Silk work on a hacked Android device? We ran performance tests
with a Nexus S running Silk, not running Silk, and then running Silk with
Amazon’s AWS Accelerated Page Loading, but the results were not impressive. The
Nexus S served pages like PCWorld in about 7 seconds on the standard browser
and an average of 6 with Silk; however, it took an average of about 9 seconds
to deliver the same page when we turned on Accelerated Page Loading. The larger
or more content-intensive the site, the slower the loading. In our tests on the
rooted Nexus S, we saw no discernible performance difference using the Silk
browser on Wi-Fi, as opposed to 3G, either.
If
that seems odd, bear in mind that Amazon has claimed that the Silk browser
cloud caching service must operate for a while in order to learn (and thus
anticipate) popular browsing habits. Ideally the app should become speedier
over time as it figures out what content to load first. That means more people
need to start using Silk as their primary browser--so if you have a rooted
Android device, this hack should provide an opportunity to put the Silk browser
through its paces. Good luck!
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from PCWorld
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