Along with the announcement of the all-new Fire 7 tablet, Amazon has quietly revealed that the next major version of Fire OS, its in-house flavor of Android, will debut in June on the new tablet, as Liliputing first spotted. Fire OS 8 will be based on Android 11, which is a significant move up from Fire OS 7, which is based on Android 9.
Fire OS 8 will add a large set of Android features from Android 10 (API 29) and Android 11 (API 30) to Amazon’s operating system. However, Amazon points out that not all aspects of Android 11 will be supported in Fire OS 8, such as File Based Encryption (FBE). Some of the newer Android improvements supported in Fire OS 8 include dark theme support, one-time permissions, sharing improvements, and background activity restrictions.
Based on the two-year cadence Amazon was following for the releases of Fire OS 5 in 2015, Fire OS 6 in 2017, and Fire OS 9 in 2019, Amazon was due to release Fire OS 8 at the end of 2021. For reasons we’ll likely never know, Amazon has pushed the release into mid-2022 with the Fire 7 tablet. It’s probably safe to assume that all future Fire tablets and Fire TV devices will be released with Fire OS 8 as well, but there were still Fire TV Smart TVs with Fire OS 6 released far after Fire OS 7 debuted, so you never know.
As for upgrading Fire OS 7 devices to Fire OS 8, that’s another big unknown. Amazon has been pretty good about updating Fire tablets to its latest OS version, since several Fire tablets that launched with Fire OS 6 have received updates to Fire OS 7 already. I wish I could say the same for Fire TV devices, but the opposite is true since no Fire TV models that launched with Fire OS 6 were ever updated to Fire OS 7. Amazon still sells the Fire TV Stick 4K with Fore OS 6, even though all other Fire TV models are running Fire OS 7.
We’ll have to wait and see if Amazon continues its current trend of only updating some Fire tablets to newer versions of Fire OS while keeping Fire TV devices on the version they launched with. That’s not to say that Fire TV devices do not receive any updates, which isn’t the case. Fire TV devices, as well as Fire tablets, are updated all the time, but they just never make the leap from one major Fire OS version to another. The last time that happened was in 2015 when Fire TVs were updated from Fire OS 3 to Fire OS 5. We’ll see if that happens again in 2022 for any of the existing Fire TV models.
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With the Fire TV Stick line – I’ll be watching just how much free space is left on an 8GB stick with Fire OS 8 (Android 11) installed. They’ve got to go to a 16GB model at some point. Maybe that’s why current sticks may not ever be upgraded to Fire OS 8?
That. And the fact that they’re already puke in the mouth slow seems likely
So only 2 Android versions behind then…
Every android version past 10 is a trash fire anyways
wish In never updated my other pixel 3a XL past 10
the one 10 is fine the one on 11 has so many problems
almost accidentally updated to 12, thank god it didn’t but now it keeps nagging
everything Google does sucks and is going backwards
honestly I have hated android since pie
it just keeps getting worse and worse
I really hope they update my firehd 10 plus to fire os 8. I dont wanna have to buy a cheaper weaker tablet just to run the os I love the firehd 10 plus with its 4gb of ram. Its just some stuff that bugs me about it bc of the older android version.
No. Xiaomi Mi Box also has 8gb and they do updates, the results are mostly garbage. Just look at the recent shield update, it has 16gb, and the results of the last update were lousy. It’s rarely done well.
Did you mean “Fire OS 7 in 2019″?
I hope it finally allows us to download Playstore or come equipped with Playstore. I really love my Fire tablet and I hate to switch back to just Google but I’m almost ready to go back..
There is no chance that amazon devices will come with playstore or have a way to download it directly anytime soon, that being said, it’s not too difficult to sideload it using “Fire Toolbox”.
Google adding the playstore to fire tablet.
It’s easy to install play store, you tube it
Hoping they fix the game controller remaps with buttons being assigned for browser controls in Silk as it is somewhat a nuisance when playing cloud gaming.
Two buttons on my Xbox one and PlayStation ds4 controllers respectively made some games on Xcloud via Silk unplayable due to this button remap. Otherwise it ran exceptionally well in full screen.
It must be an OS issue as it also happened in side-loaded Edge browser which also ran well. Other handy things I’m hoping for is mouse cursor support with Bluetooth mouse not requiring third party app install.
I would love to get the spectrum app with a newer upgrade and update they should call spectrum to see if they can get it.
With the newer update I would like to get more storage on my fire stick lite