Amazon never really reveals the internal components of its Echo Show devices, as it does for Fire TVs and Fire tablets. There’s little reason to since app development for its smart speakers is nonexistent. That has changed this week with the announcement that the Fire TV UI and, more importantly, Fire TV apps, will soon be coming to the Echo Show 15. As a result, Amazon has now published the full device specs of the Echo Show 15 and it turns out that it’s a beast of a device and practically identical to a 3rd-gen Fire TV Cube under the hood.
Amazon lists the SoC of the Echo Show 15 as an Amlogic Pop1, which seems to be very closely related to the 3rd-gen Fire TV Cube’s Amlogic Pop1-G processor. Both devices use octa-core CPUs and both have four CA73 cores and four CA53 cores. The only unknown variable about the Echo Show 15’s CPU is its clock speed, since Amazon doesn’t list it, compared to the Fire TV Cube which is listed as having four 2.2GHz and four 2.0GHz cores. The GPU of both devices, on the other hand, are identical Arm Mali-G52 GPUs, down to both of them having eight shader cores as well, as is designated by the MP8 listing for both.
Surprisingly, the Echo Show 15 has the Fire TV Cube beat in one aspect and that’s RAM. The Echo Show 15 has a whopping 3GB of RAM while the Fire TV Cube has just 2GB. Both devices have 16GB of internal storage, both support AV1 video decoding, and both devices are running Fire OS 7 based on Android 9. As for HDR support, the Echo Show 15 is listed as not supporting any variant, but that’s likely more due to the built-in screen not supporting HDR than anything else. The Echo Show 15 also only supports 1080p video, again, likely due to the screen being only a 1080p panel.
As far as the internal specs indicate, the Echo Show 15’s upcoming Fire TV capabilities might end up being on par with top-tier Fire TV devices and likely better than any Fire TV Smart TV on the market if you don’t factor in the screen quality. I’ll be picking up an Echo Show 15 once the Fire TV experience rolls out to find out firsthand, so look for that coverage later this year.
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Too many Fire devices are running on FireOS 7. The latest hardware is fairly new and nice, but the old Android – while stable, is OOOOOLD and is a bit of trouble on its own.
The latest, FireOS 8, is based on Android 11 – which is already 2 years old and most top manufacturers stop supporting Android 11 devices 2 years after release.
Amazon is just now releasing their stuff based on 11. Android 13 was fully released last month after being in pre-release for 18 months.
Even with their good prices, this is getting too hard to put up with if the user expects anything more than a kitchen or living room tosser.
The majority of users aren’t likely to know or care which Android version their Echo uses. This isn’t a phone, where the latest apps and features might hinge on new features or leverage the performance. Those that do care are likely a very small minority. This is probably true for FTV sticks, too, really.
I agree same old same old even on new up coming hardware. The look has not changed no major updates to the Fire OS. A new chrome cast with Google tv hd even has Android 12 for 30, just makes no sense on Amazon to not make a WOW factor on their new hardware. There is better hardware out there with better interfaces. Just have to see what happens
I love my kitchen echo show 15 for the Alexa widgets and the ambient intelligence they represent. Having the fire TV on it is ok but not likely to be my favorite feature. I also love my livingroom fire TV cube. I would worship it if it had the Alexa widgets on the home page. I know that feature is possible because the new Omni series fire TV’s have them (on a screen saver I believe) but I just bought a 4K tv and do not plan to buy another any time soon. Amazon update the software to add the Alexa widgets to the fire tv cube and win the war for the ultimate entertainment center.
I’m looking forward to getting fire on my echo. It’s really annoying to have to use bing to watch certain channels.
I’m hoping the update will fix the Echo Show 15 freezing problem I have.