The New Alexa Tablets Feel Like a Blueprint for an Amazon Phone
Is Amazon making a smartphone? A Reuters report from earlier this year revealed details about a device codenamed Transformer under development, with Amazon’s Alexa+ AI assistant as the focus of the experience.
With Amazon announcing a complete rebrand of its tablet line on Thursday—killing the cheap Fire Tablets and replacing them with premium Alexa Tablets that finally run Android with access to the Google Play Store—we now have a blueprint for what an Android-powered Amazon phone could look like.
Amazon’s souped-up Alexa+ assistant is front and center on the tablets. There’s a persistent “Ask Alexa” widget on the home screen that lets you call on the assistant to ask it questions—you can say “Alexa” to trigger it, too. But Alexa+ now finally has what Amazon calls On-Screen Intelligence. Like Google’s Gemini on Android phones or Apple’s Siri on iPhones, which can read your screen and answer contextual questions, Alexa now has the same functionality (if you opt in).
That can be for simple things like summarizing a web page, but it can be used for more complex tasks. Watching a YouTube video about a new product? Ask Alexa whether the product is on Amazon, and if so, add it to your Amazon shopping cart. Perusing an Infatuation article about new restaurants in your area? Ask Alexa to highlight the ones closest to your office.
Alexa also supports “live sessions,” just like Gemini Live or ChatGPT’s Voice Mode—it lets you have a free-form back-and-forth conversation with the assistant. Maybe you’re focused on a DIY project and want Alexa to spell out instructions slowly at your own pace. It also supports visual intelligence: Point the tablet’s camera at anything, and Alexa can identify the object and offer helpful advice. Got a water leak? Point the camera and ask Alexa how to fix it.
These are completely new experiences for Alexa. Amazon’s vice president of devices, Kevin Keith, tells WIRED the company “didn’t really have the right product to be able to use” these capabilities, but that’s now solved with its Android tablets.
But these features would fit right in on a smartphone, where they’d perhaps be even more useful. When I mentioned this to Keith, he laughed and said: “We have nothing to share on that. Interesting idea.”
Amazon notoriously tried to make a smartphone in 2014—the Fire Phone—a massive flop discontinued shortly after launch due to a limited app ecosystem, dismal sales, and an over-reliance on gimmicky features. (Even its designer recently said he was embarrassed by it.) That may partly be why Amazon is retiring the “Fire” branding and killing its budget tablets. People may forget the disaster and won’t be reminded of the “Fire Phone” name when the company eventually introduces a new handset.
Switching its tablets over to Google’s Android (rather than the forked version the Fire tablets ran) and adding the Google Play Store is a silent admission that it’s hard to thrive without a healthy app ecosystem. It also sets the phone up for success, as it won’t feel app-limited out of the gate like the original Fire Phone.
Alexa+ is right now a paid service that requires an Alexa+ subscription or Amazon Prime. However, Amazon says anyone with its new Alexa tablet gets Alexa+ for free, and this would likely also be the case with an Amazon phone. Amazon’s devices, after all, are vehicles used to drive users to buy stuff on Amazon.com. A 2022 Pew Research Center survey showed that 76 percent of Americans purchase products using a smartphone. It makes sense that Amazon would want more direct control over the hardware people use to make those purchases, especially if it paints Alexa as a helpful assistant that can shop for you.
Recently, Amazon has been on a mission to make its hardware more premium. This crusade seems to have ramped up after Microsoft Surface creator Panos Panay joined the company as head of Devices & Services in 2023. These upscaling efforts include the slew of Echo speakers it introduced in 2025, which saw marked price increases over their predecessors thanks to upgraded hardware. The Kindles announced at the start of October now come in sleek aluminum variants and are thinner and lighter than ever. The latest Alexa Tablets are more powerful, made from aluminum, and feel very iPad-esque.
Panay spent his final few years at Microsoft on the failed Microsoft Duo folding smartphone. When it launched, he was adamant it wasn’t a phone but rather a productivity-focused device that belonged in a new category.
The Reuters report suggests Amazon’s phone may feature an “AI interface,” what the industry often refers to as a generative user interface, that eliminates the need for traditional app stores. It could be that when Panay eventually steps on a stage to reveal an Amazon “Alexa” Phone, he’ll once again claim it’s not a phone, but a helpful AI assistant in your pocket that conforms to your demands—marking a clear departure from every other Android slab on the market.
The smartphone market is in a bit of a predicament right now. Devices are getting more expensive because of the memory crisis, shipments have declined for several quarters in a row, and the duopoly in the US market between Samsung and Apple makes it hard for other players to break through. Established smartphone companies have given up and left the market, like OnePlus this summer or HMD last year.
There isn’t much choice left in for American buyers. However, an Amazon phone, made by a company that isn’t based in China and backed by Amazon’s retail dominance, could quickly swallow the slice of the pie Motorola and Google are fighting over.