Amazon’s Fire ecosystem includes a wide range of devices, and features a very tightly-knit offering made for a very specific clientele. Amazon’s own ecosystem is more than feature-rich enough to keep fans happy, which is why their Fire tablet series has sold so well over the years, along with the generally good prices and value. A few members of that particular family of tablets, among the latest models, now has a couple new tricks up its sleeve. Just a little while back, Amazon officially brought Alexa support to qualifying members of the Fire tablet family. Those tablets now also support video queries via Alexa. On top of that, a new feature aimed at kids who like to read is on board, called Amazon Rapids. The new features are live for the Fire HD 10, Fire HD 8, and Fire Tablet.
Owners of Amazon Fire series tablets that support Alexa will now find that the AI assistant has added a whole range of new requests to its repertoire. On top of helping with common queries, music playlists, and home control, Alexa can now serve users video content. With this new feature, your favorite video content from selected content portals like Amazon’s own streaming service, Amazon Prime Video, among others, is now just a request away; you can simply ask Alexa to play a piece of video content that you want, the same way you would ask for a piece of music, and you’re off to the races.
Those who own the Alexa-supporting tablets also have access to the new Amazon Rapids, independent of Alexa. The feature is actually a service, which is being offered right now at an introductory price of $2.99 per month. Parents who sign up will find hundreds of original stories, with new ones being added regularly, in a unique format for their children to enjoy. The stories are all illustrated and written out in a similar manner to text messaging. Children can check out some aliens texting about an invasion, for instance, or sit in on a debate between two chickens on whether crossing the road is truly the right thing to do. The over the air update containing these features should be available now for all users of qualifying tablets, so if you haven’t seen it, try a reboot or switching airplane mode on and off.