Amazon has already replaced Android on the Echo Show ahead of Fire TV

Ben Schoon | Nov 14 2023 - 11:42 am PT

Last week, it was revealed that Amazon is working on an in-house OS to replace Android on select products such as the Fire TV, but as it turns out, that process has already started on the Echo Show.

Amazon’s use of Android behind the scenes of many of its products is pretty well known across the company’s tablets and Fire TV devices. In fact, a good number of customers buy Amazon’s super-affordable hardware specifically to take advantage of Android to modify the software, sideload apps, and more. What’s lesser known, though, is that Amazon has also used its modified Fire OS skin on top of Android on smart home products, including the Echo Show. It’s just much harder to modify those products due to how the skin is made.

That said, using Android on a smart display is pretty resource-intensive, which is why smart displays were among the products mentioned as switching to “Vega OS” in last week’s report.

As spotted by ZatzNotFunny, the Echo Show 5 third-generation (at least the Kids Edition) is currently running a new operating system, as denoted by the “OS 1.1” marker in the product’s settings menu. While this doesn’t strictly confirm the use of the new “Vega OS,” that’s the most likely answer, and it at least confirms that this is no longer using Fire OS. Previously, Fire OS was directly mentioned in the settings, and even a few years ago, it was at a version number over v6.5.

ZatzNotFunny further notes that Amazon has made changes to the open-source notices for Echo devices and that this latest generation of the Echo Show 5 is not compatible with Netflix, which could point to Amazon’s new OS not yet reaching Netflix’s minimum threshold for support.

Amazon’s quiet shift to this new OS, which is very likely the “Vega OS” that’s been reported, somewhat mirrors Google’s move to Fuchsia on Nest Hub smart displays. That said, Google’s shift was more technically involved, as the company replaced the operating system on active devices rather than just on new devices and did so without users even noticing – a couple of years later, that’s still wild to think about. It’s unclear if Amazon has similar plans for existing Echo devices.

Amazon hasn’t publically commented on the software difference between the latest Echo Show 5 and its other devices.