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Amazon’s Fire OS 6 will debut on the 3rd-gen Fire TV in October

One relatively small but significant announcement, that might have been missed during Amazon’s new hardware announcements yesterday, is that the new 3rd generation Fire TV will be released with Fire OS 6. This will be the first product to run Amazon’s new operating system, since all other devices, including the soon to be released Fire HD 10 tablet, run Fire OS 5.

Fire OS 6 will be based on Google’s Android 7.1.2 “Nouget” operating system and will support API level 25, which are both the latest released versions. While Google has announced that Android 8 “Oreo” will be released later this year, it’s unrealistic to expect Amazon to incorporate it into Fire OS anytime soon, considering how different Fire OS is compared to stock Android. About 15% of all devices running Android are running Android 7 and less than 2% are running the latest Android 7.1 version, so it’s reassuring to see that the new 4K HDR Fire TV will join the top-tier at launch.

Having access to the latest APIs isn’t as important for a device like the Fire TV, since most 3rd-party apps focus on video playback which rarely necessitates the latest APIs. Fire OS 6 will be more important for Amazon’s Fire tablets, whenever it inevitably arrives on those devices, since tablet apps tend to cover a wider gamut of capabilities.