Tech companies love giving their devices themed codenames and Amazon is no exception. While Google has stuck with desserts as it’s Android codename theme, Amazon has used movie characters for all of their Fire TV related codenames. The 1st-gen Amazon Fire TV is codenamed “BUELLER”, named after Ferris Bueller, the lead character in the movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. After spending a few hours digging around in the source code of the developer preview of Fire OS 5, I’ve discovered that the codename for the next-generation Fire TV is “SLOANE”, named after Sloane Peterson, Ferris Bueller’s girlfriend in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. This now further confirms that the mysterious “Amazon AFTS” device which leaked a couple months ago is in fact the next generation Fire TV, and also reaffirms that there will not be a new Fire TV Stick released alongside the new Fire TV.
The device model name, listed on Amazon’s specifications page, for the current Fire TV is AFTB, which is an abbreviation for Amazon Fire TV Bueller. The Fire TV Stick is listed with a model name of AFTM, where the “M” stands for “MONTOYA”, the Fire TV Stick’s codename. Montoya is a reference to Inigo Montoya, a popular character from the movie The Princess Bride.
The Fire OS 5 source code explicitly lists only 3 Fire TV devices. The first is “DEVICE_148” which I’ve confirmed to be the current Fire TV Stick. (There is a section of the code which sets a variable named
Fire TV peripherals also get their own codenames. First is “HURLEY”, the codename for the Fire TV Voice Remote. Your guess is as good as mine for which character Hurley references. The Fire Game Controller is codenamed “THUNDER”, which again could be any number of movie characters. “LIGHTNING” is the codename for the Fire TV Remote App, made evident by the app’s package name of
Along with the existing Fire TV remotes and controllers, I found reference to two new peripheral codenames: “GELATO” and “NEFARIO”. I’m confident these are the codenames for the new WiFi based Fire TV remote and game controller. I believe these codenames come from the movie Despicable Me which features the character Dr. Nefario and minions who love gelato ice cream. The lack of a third new peripheral codename, to replace the existing non-voice remote, is further evidence that there will not be a new Fire TV Stick released when the new Fire TV arrives at the end of the month.
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Hurley from “Lost,”, no? ;-)
Hurley is a character in LOST.
Thunder and Lightning are lesser known DC superheroes from TITANS lore. Alternately, the daughters of BLACK LIGHTNING.
The Lab126s know their pop culture. :)
Too bad no new stick. Yet.
It’ll save me money, though.
(Rats!)
Once again Cameron gets screwed
LOL
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Would be weird if they didn’t come out with a stick version since that seemed to be even more popular than the full sized version. I think a stick version is just further down the timeline just as the original stick was release a while after the original full sized version.
In any case I’m excited to see what new features are coming but also not wanting my current fire tv to be obsolete.
obsolete..exactly what I’m a little worried about. I hope we can get atleast 3-5 years out of the old generation stuff before they really feel dated.
Looking at the leaked specs, what exactly are we going to get with the new revision? 4K is huge, but I personally don’t have that yet and don’t care. Bump in CPU/GPU… no problems with any of the content I play now and I really don’t care for using it as a hardcore gaming device (i’d get the shield for that). AC wireless perhaps is nice? But i’m hardwired for all streaming. The hd space is showing the same, which is CRAZY, but external drive has already taken care of that.
I am not saying that there aren’t many that will benefit from these bumps, but unless there are some really fancy new peripherals or software changes, I probably won’t be jumping on it or considering the current gen obsolete at all.
The truth of the matter is you don’t need much to pull off the Fire TV and Fire TV Stick’s core functionality, which is ability to stream high quality video. Everything in addition to streaming video is just icing on the cake, so I don’t expect people to be blown away by any new features. That said, It’s still nice to see a refresh.
External doesn’t really solve the space problem though as you still need a fair amount of space on the internal memory when on an external device. I also personally find that buffering is more common when an app is partly on an external device. I do think that’s the one thing the FireTV really needs, 16GB would be a major boost let a boost to 32GB and it would be worth a last minute rethink by Amazon (or release multiple drive sizes)
I have no doubt that Amazon will eventually release a new Fire TV Stick. It just doesn’t look like it will be a simultaneous release with a new Fire TV.
Ok, the wording of the title made it seem like you were saying that it was unlikely there would ever be a new fire tv stick.
Nice to see that the Fire TV, and eventually stick, will continue to evolve. Was a bit nervous after the unfortunate Fire Phone fiasco.
The phone is sweet. Amazing that Amazon shot itself in the foot by not allowing Google Play, but still used their Android OS as the foundation for their own OS. But I digress.
I see no reason to upgrade to the new AFT as the current AFT is a top shelf experience already. I am hopeful that Amazon takes Rokus lead in that the OS can and will be constantly updated to keep up with the new release units, with the new release units gaining primarily upgraded hardware functionality.
As has been mentioned already, the prime use of these devices is streaming content from the internet to your TV. Anything beyond that is icing on the cake. With that being said, I have no need or want for a headphone jack in the remote, IR would be nice so Harmony remotes could be used, etc…
This is exciting. Looking forward to giving old AFTV to Mom and Mom-in-law, and giving me an excuse to upgrade to the new version and not feel bad about spending the money. Looking forward to playing around under the hood…and super excited about the voice search function getting deeper and deeper. Come one Netflix!
Any way of telling if the new AFTV2 will support NTFS Drives. For me the device is like 90% perfect…but I can’t access any of my local content that is over 4Gb.
BOARD sloane
BOOTLOADER unknown
BRAND Amazon
CPU_ABI armeabi-v7a
CPU_ABI2 armeabi
DEVICE sloane
DISPLAY LMY47O
FINGERPRINT Amazon/full_sloane/sloane:5.1/LMY47O/36.5.3.1_user_531000320:user/release-keys
HARDWARE mt8173
HOST ip-10-11-2-109
ID LMY47O
IS_DEBUGGABLE FALSE
MANUFACTURER Amazon
MODEL AFTS
PRODUCT full_sloane
RADIO unknown
REQ_BATTERY_LEVEL 0.0
SERIAL G070GV02517200W8
SUPPORTED_32_BIT_ABIS [Ljava.lang.String;@2af075f5
SUPPORTED_64_BIT_ABIS [Ljava.lang.String;@3cd10f8a
SUPPORTED_ABIS [Ljava.lang.String;@267bd9fb
TAGS release-keys