At the end of last year, Amazon made one of its biggest Fire TV Stick announcements ever, unveiling Vega OS, its new Linux-based operating system. Since then, the company has released three new Fire TV Sticks powered by Vega OS: the Fire TV Stick 4K Select (2025), the Fire TV Stick HD (2026), and its latest model, the Fire TV Stick 4K (2026).
While Amazon has highlighted how Vega OS is faster and more efficient than Fire OS, the Android-based operating system it’s used on Fire TV devices for over a decade, there’s one major downside to the switch. Because Vega OS is Linux-based, it leaves behind several of the key features that made Android-based Fire TV Sticks so great and popular in the first place, including support for a much wider variety of Android apps.
Unfortunately, Amazon has already announced that all future Fire TV Sticks will run Vega OS. In other words, the era of Android-based Fire TV Sticks is coming to an end. But just because Amazon is no longer releasing new Android models doesn’t mean Fire OS is suddenly irrelevant. The company has committed to becoming a “multi-OS company” and continuing to update both Vega OS and Fire OS with new features, meaning older Android-based Fire TV Sticks aren’t being left behind just yet.
With that in mind, if you own an older Android-based Fire TV Stick, there are still plenty of reasons to hold on to it for years to come, even as Amazon moves forward with Vega OS.
Access to thousands of Android apps
Fire OS has far more apps than Vega OS
…