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A new report claims Amazon is working on a new operating system designed to be used for future versions of its Fire TV and Echo Show devices. The report comes from the Lowpass newsletter which previously was the first to report on the “free” Telly smart TV.
In its latest report, it states that the new OS from Amazon has the internal code name of Vega. In the past, Fire TV devices have used the Android Open Source Project as the basis for creating its Fire TV OS. The current version of Amazon’s operating system is based on Android 9, well behind Google’s current Android 14.
The newsletter stated that the new Linux-based Vega OS does not have a lot of the code in Android that is not needed for smart home devices. It added:
App developers are being told to use React Native as an application framework, which allows them to build native apps with Javascript-powered interfaces. React Native also allows developers to build apps across a much wider range of devices and operating systems, including iOS and Android hardware as well as a range of smart TVs. It will likely enable them to build the same apps for newer Vega-powered devices and legacy Fire TV hardware still running Android.
One of the report’s sources claims the most of the development of the new OS “is already done” and Amazon was now trying to convince app developers to actually use it. Some Fire TV devices could ship with the new OS sometime in 2024, according to the report.
It also says that Amazon plans to eventually use the Vega OS for all of its devices, including in-car operating system, and unnamed future tech projects. The new OS could also serve as a way for Amazon to serve up ads and paid services
