Amazon could be bringing huge Android upgrade to | Tech News

Amazon Fire tablets are some of the most well-liked reasonably priced tablets on the market thanks to their large availability and comparatively low costs in contrast to rival merchandise from Apple and Samsung.

If all you need your pill to do is energy up reliably and stream Netflix, you’ll be able to normally choose up the newest Fire HD 8 for much less than its £99.99 RRP, far much less than the most affordable £329 iPad. But there may be a draw back to the Fire pill line up that forestalls it from being an automated suggestion, and that’s the lack of the total Android working system – however that could be set to change in accordance to a new report.

Reuters has reported Amazon is mulling the release of a high-end Android pill that may run the total Android working system for the primary time. This would make it the primary Amazon branded pill to embrace the Google Play Store and have the flexibility to run Google apps.

All of Amazon’s present Fire tablets run a modified model of Android known as FireOS that doesn’t embrace the Play Store and can’t run Google apps – so there’s no Gmail, Google Drive, Google Maps or YouTube.

That’s as a result of the firm has most popular to sell tablets at low value to encourage gross sales after which use them to promote Amazon’s own digital content material, reminiscent of Prime Video subscriptions and Kindle e-books. Cutting out entry to Google apps and utilizing the FireOS structure to push customers in direction of Amazon companies has been the Fire tablets’ focus since launch in 2011.

But hearsay now has it that Amazon is gearing up the release of a “higher-end tablet as soon as next year offering the Android operating system software for the first time”, in accordance to Reuters. This wouldn’t solely imply the flexibility to obtain Google apps, however could signal Amazon’s shift to problem Apple and Samsung within the normal pill market for patrons who need to use them for more than simply streaming video.

The different challenge Amazon has is that by working its own app store on FireOS, it requires builders to make totally different variations of apps. This has resulted in a restricted choice of apps for Fire pill customers, a drawback that might not exist if the gadgets ran full Android and had entry to the Google Play Store.

The report claims an Amazon insider mentioned Amazon is contemplating a price of about $400 for the new Fire pill, which is about £300. The firm’s present priciest Fire HD 11 pill prices £249.99.

We’ll have to wait and see if Amazon takes a first step into the final Android pill market, however even when it does, it’s very doubtless the company will proceed to sell its very low-cost Fire pill vary with FireOS.