Amazon tablets with up to 16GB of RAM could be coming soon

Disclosure: Some links on this page are monetized by the Skimlinks, Amazon, Rakuten Advertising, and eBay, affiliate programs, and Liliputing may earn a commission if you make a purchase after clicking on those links. All prices are subject to change, and this article only reflects the prices available at time of publication.Amazon launched its first Kindle Fire tablet in 2011, and over the years the company has dropped the Kindle name, dabbled in the high-end space, and largely settled on the idea that its devices would compete on price and convenience, rather than speed or a broad app ecosystem.But that could be set to change soon. Last year we learned that Amazon was working on new tablets that could ditch the company’s Fire OS software and ship with a new version of Android based on AOSP (Android Open Source Code). Now there’s evidence that they could hit the streets soon.Label drawing (FCC)Folks in the /r/kindlefire subreddit spotted a new Amazon device at the FCC website. While that page doesn’t provide many details, a device with the same model number has shown up in import documents, so we know some key specs for the upcoming device:Processor: MediaTek Kompanio 540 (MT8189)CPU: 2 x Arm Cortex-A78 @ 2.6 GHz + 6 x Cortex-A55 @ 2 GHzGPU: Mali-G57 MC2RAM: 8GBStorage: 64GBThat processor isn’t all that interesting – it’s virtually identical to the MT8188J chip used in the Amazon Fire Max 11 tablet from 2023. But the Fire Max 11 has been out of stock for months, and it only shipped with 4GB of RAM when it was available. So it’s nice to see that new models with more memory are on the way… although RAMageddon has me a little scared to ask how much they’ll cost.And if you are looking for something with a little more performance, the import listings also mention a new Amazon tablet with an unreleased MediaTek MT8793 processor that may bring a b bit more horsepower. That tablet is also expected to support up to 16GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, which would be a big upgrade over current or previous-gen Amazon tablets.But the biggest upgrade would be the move from Fire OS to something closer to stock Android software… if it means you get access to apps and features that aren’t currently available on Fire OS. While that operating system is based on Android, it’s Amazon’s fork that is tightly tied to the company’s apps and services… and largely decoupled from Google’s.That means that even if you hack your Fire Tablet by installing the Google Play Store, many apps won’t run properly on today’s Fire tablets. Whether a move to AOSP will change that remains to be seen. But interestingly, it seems like Amazon’s tablets may be moving in the opposite direction of its media streamers.A growing number of Amazon Fire TV products are shipping with the new Vega OS instead of Fire OS. This gives Amazon more control over the software that runs on these devices, while also reducing the amount of RAM required, among other things. While it also means that some apps that run on Android-based Fire TVs are no longer supported, that’s not as big of a dealbreaker for a media streaming device as it is for a general-purpose tablet.Honestly, given recent trends, I wouldn’t have been surprised if Amazon just stopped selling its own tablets altogether. But instead it looks like the company could soon released models with better specs and software that could make the tablets at least a little more versatile.