Summary
- Amazon is reportedly working on its own operating system to replace Android on its Fire hardware, as suggested by a deleted job posting.
- The new operating system, potentially named Vega, is based on Linux and was spotted on the Echo Show 5 Kids Edition.
- The job ad has now been deleted, suggesting the change to Fire hardware may be happening soon.
After months and months of rumors, Amazon appears to be taking the inevitable leap from Android to its own operating system for its Fire hardware. When we first heard that this was a possibility in late 2023, we gawked, saying history shows that Amazon does not have the best track record with building its own software. For example, the company’s Scribe e-reader which was supposed to be a premium, high-end tablet, ended up being mediocre at best. But, thanks to a potentially inadvertent job posting on Amazon’s website, we can presume that Amazon is actively working on replacing Android in its hardware.
The job listing is now deleted from Amazon’s website, but it has been archived through the Wayback Machine (via AFTVNews). The role is for a Fire TV Experience Software Development Engineer, and much of its description leaves little to the imagination that whoever is hired will work on replacing the Android-based OS on Fire TV devices with an in-house operating system. The listing read that the person who fills this role will “implement and deliver features on the Fire TV client codebase as it transitions from FOS/Android to native/Rust and React Native.” FOS stands for Fire OS, and we can imagine that Rust will be an underlying name for whatever native OS future Amazon Fire TV devices run on.
Amazon first created Fire OS back in 2011 when the first Kindle Fire tablet was released. It was based on Gingerbread 2.3, and at the time, it was a solid budget-line prospect. With Amazon already staking its claim as a marketplace behemoth, the fact that it was dipping its toes into the hardware side of the tech world was legitimately exciting. Over the next 12-plus years, Amazon has added multiple devices to its lineup, including the Fire Stick/TV, Echo Show, and the Fire Phone (let’s not talk about that one). The grand unifier among all of these devices is that they run off Fire OS, an Android fork.
Enter Vega. This is what we’ve heard is the name of a new OS that Amazon is working on to replace Fire OS on its smart home devices (so, it probably won’t affect Fire tablets). Vega is supposedly based on Linux, and it was found running on the Echo Show 5 Kids Edition. It doesn’t look different from Fire OS on the Echo Show, but its new architecture has already led to issues with casting Netflix to the device.
If you already have an Amazon Fire tablet sitting around, you might not be getting the most out of it because of Amazon’s skinning down of its Android features. It’s not hard to make it feel more like a stock Android device though, and you can get rid of things like the Silk browser, replace modules such as the home screen launcher, and more. Because those devices are filled with Amazon-centric bloat, an already underpowered product can feel even more sluggish than it should, but there are still ways to speed those Fire tablets up. If all this work you might have to do to get a better Android tablet experience doesn’t scare you away, we recommend buying the Amazon Fire HD 10, but other Fire tablets may work out better for your needs and wallet.
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