Upcoming Amazon Fire tablet refresh may sport Android 5.1

Amazon made a splash with the original Fire tablet that was incredibly inexpensive at the time. The online retailer has been quiet on the future of the Fire series, however, ever since the Fire Phone failed to gain any traction. The current Fire tablets include the Fire HD 6, Fire HD 7, Fire HDX, and Fire HDX 8.9 with the signature "Mayday" feature for live assistance. These are now almost two years old, so it's about time for Amazon to introduce a refreshed series possibly in time for the Holidays.

According to recent rumors, Amazon is gearing up to announce up to four tablet models in the 6- to 10-inch range. An allegedly leaked image from @evleaks shows a 10-inch Kindle Fire model with a more Android-like interface instead of the more traditional Amazon Fire OS interface.

To add fuel to the fire, two new Amazon models have also appeared in the GFXBench database as the 10-inch Amazon KFTBWI and 8-inch Amazon KFMEWI. Both tablets will apparently ship with Android 5.1 with the Fire OS 5 skin. Core specifications include a resolution of 1280 x 800 for both tablets and an older MediaTek MT8135 SoC with PowerVR Rogue G6200 GPU. Amazon has yet to make any official announcements, however, so take these with the usual grain of salt.

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