When Amazon revealed the Fire Phone last year at the announcement event in Seattle, the Firefly feature was something new and refreshing that most consumers may have not expected. While the Fire Phone and the Fire HDX tablets were previously the only ways to use the company’s feature for helping you buy stuff from their site more easily, they’re now expanding the option to use the Firefly functionality on the Amazon Fire HD tablets as well, essentially making it available on all current mobile products that they offer. The Firefly feature is coming to the tablets through an over the air update and Amazon is apparently rolling it out to various markets too.
Amazon is of course adding Firefly to the devices here in the U.S., which makes sense given the U.S. is their largest market and their home base of operations. They’re also rolling out the feature to the Fire HD tablet users in Germany and the UK as well, so if you reside in any of these locations and happen to own a Fire HD tablet, look out for the update between now and the coming weeks as it hopefully won’t be long before you see it pop up. Some devices will get it quicker than others of course, and according to Amazon the update will continue to roll out over the span of several weeks so you may still not see the update for a little while.
Since this is an over the air software update, the Firefly feature is not alone but likely comes along with bug fixes and improvements. If you’ve never used the Firefly feature before, it allows users to scan real world items of books, magazines, music, movies, tv shows, and other stuff and proceeds to identify it, and then recreates a digital representation of the item if it can be identified and will then find it for you to buy through Amazon’s massive library of online merchants. It’s a wonder Amazon hadn’t rolled this out to the legion of Fire HD tablets that are already out on the market as it serves an easier way for people to buy things through Amazon.