Amazon’s Kindle line of tablets have evolved over time from “that thing I keep books on” to a full-featured tablet with an app store, music player, cloud services, and much more. Now, reports that Amazon is working on a new, $50 Kindle Fire with a 6-inch screen are turning heads back towards the tech titan. Amazon’s Kindle Fire tablets offer an Android offshoot called Fire OS that looks and feels very familiar to Android phone and tablet users, but with some slight variations. The Google Play Store and Google Now, for instance, aren’t available on Fire OS.
Techtimesspeculated that the new Kindle Fire tabletswill likely have a similar look as the old ones, with little changes to hardware but some new software features. Amazon also recently introduced the Amazon Echo, a voice-controlled music player powered by its virtual assistant Alexa, so it’s possible Alexa could be integrated more tightly into Kindle in the future. The features the new version of Fire OSwill bring to these new tablets is unknown at the moment, but the update will be based on one of the latest Android versions, Lollipop (version 5.0).
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— iWebUp Tech News (@iWebUp) September 16, 2015
A Developer’s Preview of Fire OS 5 is out now for those who want to see how their apps will run on the new OS, or those who are dying to upgrade. Developers and the public will need a Fire HDX 6 or 7 tablet to get on board with the new Fire OS; however, the upgrade is free for the time being. T3 guessed that the new Kindles will boast an improved camera and the latest version of Fire OS. It’s also likely that older features such as the carousel of recent apps and the FireFly music/TV show identification app will return to the new Kindle Fire.
If speculation is anything to be believed, Amazon could also be working on a 10-inch Kindle , which would be the biggest tablet ever made by them. This might be a response to rumors that Apple is crafting a massive 13.9 inch iPad Pro to be released alongside the iPhone 6S, presumably next summer. The trend towards bigger tablets than can be used with or instead of a computer seems to be taking off quickly, and Amazon may have to play catch-up with its competitors if this trend continues.
[Image Credit: Engadget.com ]
