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Fire OS

Forrest Stroud
Last Updated May 24, 2021 7:43 am

A highly customized variant of Google’s Android mobile operating system developed by Amazon to power its Fire line of entertainment products, which includes the Kindle Fire tablets, the Fire Phone smartphone, and the Fire TV entertainment set-top box.

Differences Between Fire OS and Android

While Fire OS’s foundation is Android, there are some significant differences between the two mobile operating systems. Most notably, Fire OS utilizes Amazon-specific apps and services instead of Google’s, including the Silk Browser web browser rather than Google Chrome, the Amazon Appstore in place of Google Play, Cloud Player and Cloud Drive as opposed to Google Drive, and Amazon s e-mail client over Google’s Gmail.

The most recent version of the Fire OS, version 3.5.0, is based on the 4.4.2 release of the “KitKat” Android mobile OS.