Kindle Scribe: any way to block firmware updates for potential jailbreak? pointless?

[arooni]

Purchased the Kindle Scribe deal today.

Question: is there any point to blocking software updates such that a future jailbreak might be possible?

Or, is this pointless given that it'd lock me out of notes/note taking updates that might happen between now and a future jailbreak?

A jailbreak seems unlikely given there haven't been any for a long time correct? So perhaps pointless to be waiting for something that may never occur?

Many thanks!

[BionicGecko]

At the moment the simplest way to avoid automatic updates on the Scribe is to put it in flight mode; there might be ways to block access to the Amazon servers directly on your router, but I wouldn’t know which addresses or domains to blacklist.

The problem with the Scribe is that so much of its core functionality relies on the Amazon cloud that it makes it quite impractical to keep it offline. Unless you only plan on writing notes on blank sheets (i.e. not in books or on PDFs) and never exporting them outside of your Scribe, you will have to let your Scribe talk to the Amazon servers at some point.

Another option is to fill your Scribe to the brim with books or personal docs, so that there isn’t enough room left to hold the update file, in which case it won’t be automatically downloaded; but this requires managing the storage so there’s still always enough room left for your notes, etc.

Personally today I don’t see a major reason to jailbreak a Kindle as many of the traditional benefits of jailbreaking (e.g. custom fonts, book cover as screen saver) are now available in the official Amazon firmware. You still need to jailbreak if you want to use an alternative reader application like KOReader, but you won’t be able to use Scribe-specific features (such as taking notes within a book) as KOReader doesn’t support them.

So it’s really up to you to see if the benefits you expect from jailbreaking outweigh the drawbacks; for what it’s worth, for the Scribe in particular, I don’t think the trade off is worth it.

[mergen3107]

One of the old methods was to fill up the space with less than 250 MB (or maybe different size?), so that automatic update stops itself.

[Mare of Earth]

Just got my Scribe (yes, I bought on the Prime Day deal as well) - based on the functionality, I don’t see where jailbreaking would be beneficial.

[tomsem]

Originally Posted by Mare of Earth

Just got my Scribe (yes, I bought on the Prime Day deal as well) - based on the functionality, I don’t see where jailbreaking would be beneficial.

As I understand it, the main reason most people want to jailbreak is to install KOReader and use that to read and organize things, including connecting to calibre server etc. They like the Kindle as hardware but want to bypass Kindle platform way of doing things.

The normal Kindle functionality (including Notebook) would still be available.

It's a much lighter lift to just get a different eReader that doesn't need to be jailbroken (Kobo or PocketBook for example).

[dsjstc]

Originally Posted by tomsem

...
the main reason most people want to jailbreak is to install KOReader

This is exactly why I do not yet own a Scribe. I want to sync sideloaded books and reading positions with my other devices, most of which are not Kindles. The only cross-platform way to do this (that I'm aware of) is KoReader.

So I don't buy devices that can't run it.

[reminon]

I like my scribe. It's been in flight mode since day 1.the current updates haven't been beneficial enough to me to even care. I like having a nice huge ereader with 300dpi. I loved my oasis but it's too small. Only downside I've seen is not having the page turn buttons.i still use my scribe as a notebooks when I need one. I have no reason to care for the updates until it's jailbroken. There are already multiple flaws that people have found that can be used in a Jailbreak. Those people are waiting on amazon to fix them.