Amazon has enhanced their operating system to pave the way for the new line of Fire tablets. It is entitled Sangria and upgrades the Android OS to Kitcat and packs a number of money functions.
The latest version of Fire OS, “Sangria,” continues Fire OS’ content-forward user interface that delivers easy and fast access to your favorite books, songs, videos, and games—open them with one tap rather than hunting through folders and apps. Fire OS 4 updates the visual design of the UI and adds Profiles so each family member can have their own individual email, Facebook and Twitter accounts, settings such as display brightness, bookmarks, spot in a movie, and game levels.
Fire OS 4 is based on KitKat and adds features and services to make it faster and easier to use. For example, Fire OS includes ASAP (Advanced Streaming and Prediction) which predicts the movies and TV episodes you’ll want to watch and starts them instantly, and Smart Suspend develops a device-specific profile for when the tablet is typically not in use and proactively turns wireless off and on to deliver up to 25% more standby battery life.
Fire OS is not just a device OS—it deeply integrates with the Amazon cloud to further improve performance and ease-of-use, to enable cross-platform syncing, and to power services that require more processing than is possible on a mobile device. Examples of new cloud services in Fire OS 4 include Family Library so you can share your apps, games, audiobooks, books, and Prime Instant Video content with other members of your household; Firefly so you can identify and take action on artwork, text, and audio instantly—available for over 100 million items; and free unlimited storage in Cloud Drive for photos taken on Fire devices.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.