I read that Amazon just came out with a major update to the Fire phone OS and I’d like to make sure my phone’s up to date. How can I push or force a system update?
Boy, I start writing about the Amazon Fire phone and people start coming out of the woodwork with Fire questions! As you probably know, the Fire phone runs Amazon’s version of Android, the same version that you can find on Kindle devices. Problem is, because it’s Amazon’s version of Android, that means that when Android upgrades to a newer version, that’s not automatically and instantly also available for Amazon devices like the Fire phone.
Instead, you need to wait until Amazon fixes everything up and integrates its Carousel, Firefly technology and other add-ons to the system before your phone will be ready for the new operating system.
When it is available, the good news is that just like a Kindle, your phone should automatically update to the latest version without any intervention.
But if you really want to make sure you’re up to date start by tapping on “Settings”.
See “Device” near the bottom? Tap on it.
Now you’ll have quite a few device settings:
The one you seek is right in the middle: “Install system update”.
Tap on that to see what version you’re running and the status of your phone:
You can see I’m running Fire OS 3.5.1 (111009920), but the last time the phone checked was 11 days ago, so maybe it’s time to check again.
Tap on “Check Now” and it’ll go out and check to see if there’s a newer version, then report back:
“No updates found”. So that’s that.
If you’re seeing the same thing, then you’re phone’s also up-to-date. Easy enough, as you can see!