Change Amazon Fire Phone into an almost normal Android phone without root (2)

2, Install Google Maps 4.4

[Update] This problem has been fixed. Latest version of Google Maps works just fine. 

Only this early version google maps works. (Later version of Google Maps all suffer from label rendering issue, you can try and see for yourself.) 

Please remember to turn off auto-update in your amazon/google play to ensure it won't update.

Click here to download Google Maps 4.4 APK

3, Install Google/3rd Party Keyboard

Amazon only allow user to choose from its own keyboard which sucks. Good thing is, we have a way to enable 3rd party keyboard now. Here's how:

a) Install the keyboard from Google Play or your own APK

b) Enable USB Debugging on your Fire Phone

Setting -> Device -> Get Info About Your Fire -> Click on Software Version about 5 times -> Developer Options shows up -> Turn on Developer Options -> Debugging -> Check USB Debugging

c) Install Android Developer Studio

Sorry you have to do this. I have it on my computer all along. There could be a smaller set of tools available, but I am not sure.

Download Android Developer Studio Here

d) Install Amazon Fire Phone Driver on PC and connect your Fire Phone

Please refer to the official Amazon Developer Guide HERE.

Hint: Go to device manager to refresh your driver if required (for Windows Users).

e) Enable your IME in cmd/shell

Confirm that your Fire Phone is correctly connected to PC.

adb devices 

List all IME installed.

adb shell ime list -a

Take Google Pinyin IME as an example, you would spot it listed as below:

com.google.android.inputmethod.pinyin/.PinyinIME

Now we will enable it.

adb shell ime enable com.google.android.inputmethod.pinyin/.PinyinIME

Done, now we can go to the IME and set it as default.

Thanks to the original discussion in xda-developers! 

4, Launcher with wallpaper and widgets

Only Fire Phone owner understands the pain. If we're trying to abandon the native launcher and install a new one like the popular Apex Launcher, Nova Launcher, or Google Now Launcher, it either has no support for wallpaper or has no support for widgets, sometimes neither!!!

Thanks again to another thread in xda-developers, we have a winner, Lightning Launcher!!!

Lightning Launcher on Google Play

You can either pay $3.5 to the developer on Google Play or side-load apk from 3rd party.

It supports both wallpaper and widgets. The customization is quite painful, I have to say that it is not a job-well-done app. But what other choice do we have? At least it works!

After all these suffer, we can start using our Fire Phone almost like a normal Android Phone. Have fun!

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