Amazon’s new Fire tablet will finally run a slightly more modern version of Android
How much do you about which version of Android your devices are running? If you consider yourself a smartphone enthusiast, you’re probably aware of the software that’s on your phone right now, but what about all the other devices in your life? Have you checked which version ofAndroid TVpowers your living room set? Keeping track gets even more complicated when we’re talking about Android forks, like Amazon’s heavily tweaked Fire OS. Now with the upcoming release of the new2022 Fire 7 tablet, Amazon is delivering a big update, introducing the Android 11-based Fire OS 8.
When Amazon announced the refreshed Fire 7 earlier this week, the big thing we were paying attention to was the hardware — and specifically, the long-overdue move to USB-C connectivity. But in addition to upgrades like that, the tablet will be the first to arrive running Fire OS 8 (viaLiliputing).
While Fire OS 8 won’t includeallthe functionality you might expect from Android 11 (stuff like File Based Encryption isn’t present), it does pick up a lot of important changes from both 11 and 10 alike (the existing Fire OS 7 is based on Android 9 Pie). That means a system-wide dark mode, improved permissions, and of course the latest security tweaks. In itsdeveloper documentation, Amazon goes into further detail about exactly to expect.
This sounds like great news for the new Fire 7, but what about the rest of Amazon’s existing tablet lineup? That’s a much less clear situation (perThe Verge), and so far the company has yet to publicly commit to any sort of update plans for older hardware.
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