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How to Downgrade Your Fire HD 7, HD 6 Tablet from Fire OS 5 Bellini to OS 4 Sangria

156199400_d93daecfa7_bNot everyone is happy about the most recent update which added Fire OS Bellini to the Fire HD 7, Fire HDX 8.9, and Fire HD 6 tablets.

Users are complaining on Amazon’s support forums, the comment section of this blog, and elsewhere about the missing carousel, radical changes to the interface, the font size, and oh yes, the removal of device-level encryption.

I find myself indifferent to the change (although I would agree that the new interface is not an improvement) but I can appreciate that Bellini is such a major change from Fire OS 4 Sangria that I can see why some people would hate it.

Bellini replaces the carousel with a more complicated multi-page, multi-directional home page that is frankly less useful at helping you find and use your content (but I’m sure it’s going to do wonders for pitching you content Amazon wants you to buy).

Luckily, there’s a way to downgrade certain Fire tablet models, to go back to the older version of Fire OS.

Amazon has published a new help page which informs us that owners of Fire HD 7, Fire HD 6, and Fire HDX 8.9 can reset their tablets and reinstall the older OS, Sangria.

The option can be found on the "manage your content and devices" page on the Amazon website:

device-option-os-update

The process involves a complete hardware wipe and re-installation of the older OS, according to Amazon:

Downgrading to Fire OS 4 requires a factory reset and will remove all of your personal information, Amazon account information, downloaded content and application from internal storage.

Fire OS 4 will be available from the cloud within 72 hours and requires that your device be powered on, connected to Wi-Fi and with battery level at least 50% to downgrade. Fire OS 4 will download in the background and the device will reset and downgrade when the download completes and the device is idle. It is not possible to cancel the rollback process once the request has been made.

If you want to go through with it, go to the manage your content and devices page, select the "devices" tab, and then choose the specific tablet. You can find the downgrade option in the dropdown menu (see the above screensnap).

This process will wipe everything from your tablet, so make sure that all of your personal files are backed up before you begin. In fact, you might want to have two backups, just in case.

image by darinmarshall

 

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Comments


Gary March 12, 2016 um 2:20 pm

I don’t have a Fire tablet, so this may be irrelevant…

How do you stop your 'downgraded' kindle device from reinstalling OS 5 Bellini a week later? Do you have to turn off 'automatic updates'?

Nate Hoffelder March 12, 2016 um 3:13 pm

One way would be to enable the encryption.

But I’m not sure how else to stop the upgrade; I had assumed that Amazon would flag any downgraded tablet.


You can downgrade (some) Amazon Fire tablets to Fire OS 4 – Liliputing March 14, 2016 um 4:44 pm

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