Images of what appear to be a new Amazon Fire TV Stick have leaked ahead of the company’s hardware event this Thursday. WinFuture.de, which shared the pictures, says they show the upcoming “Amazon Fire TV Stick Lite” — a likely successor to the discontinued $35 second-generation Fire TV Stick.
Visually there are no surprises here, with the design of the device barely changing from earlier models. The main differences are a new Amazon logo on the bottom of the remote, the removal of the power and volume buttons, and a new button with a TV icon. There are no leaked specs so we can only speculate about hardware changes. But it’s possible the new TV button will take viewers to Amazon’s growing selection of live TV broadcasts.
As the company detailed in a blog post in July, Fire TV now supports live content from apps including Sling TV and YouTube TV, with support for Hulu + Live TV “coming soon.” All this live content can be accessed from a single category in the Fire TV app, and if Amazon is pushing this feature it makes sense to add a dedicated button to the device’s remote.
A new Fire TV Stick Lite would be positioned as the cheaper alternative to the $50 Fire TV Stick 4K. And given Google is also rumored to be launching a new Chromecast this month, it’s a good time for Amazon to bring out a new a budget TV streaming stick of its own.
