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Amazon has long employed customized versions of Android to power its diverse range of products. These include Fire TVs, smart displays, and more. However, after a report has emerged, this might be coming to an end. First reported by Lowpass, Amazon might be working on a new operating system. It is dubbed “Vega”, and Amazon is likely to Android for this new OS on most of its devices.
Be it Fire Tablet, Fire TV, and more, Amazon has built most of its hardware on the back of Android, specifically by using AOSP (Android Open Source Program) to “fork” the OS to skip out on Google services and heavily customize the platform as per its preference. Basically, Forking means to customize the Android’s code with some special features or modifying the pre-existing features.
Amazon has “mostly” developed the Vega OS for Fire devices
Lowpass report says that Amazon has been working on this transition since around 2017. There has been a dedicated team for the development and a significant portion of the work has already been done. Fire TVs could probably be the first devices to come out with Vega OS. The report also suggests undergoing testing on Fire TV devices. Hence, Amazon is set to ship new hardware featuring the Vega OS as early as next year.
It remains uncertain if this change will extend to Amazon’s Fire Tablets, which heavily rely on native Android apps. However, it seems to be a logical step for Amazon to integrate the new OS into its ecosystem of products.
Android-powered Amazon tablets haven’t received updates in a while
Amazon generally lags well behind on Android versions, even with its latest Amazon tablets. Take, the Amazon Fire Max 11, for an example. The 11-inch tablet was released in 2023, and the latest OS it runs is three-year-old Android 11-powered Fire OS 8. Meanwhile, Google last month has already released Android 14, and key smartphone makers have refreshed their devices with the latest OS.