The 2026 Amazon Fire Stick HD runs a MediaTek MT8698D SoC paired with a Mali G310V2 GPU clocked at 500 MHz. YouTuber electronupdate performed a full teardown, including die shots of the power management IC, revealing ceramic patch antennas for Bluetooth and Wi-Fi alongside a MediaTek MT7902 wireless chip and standard NAND Flash.
The most damning detail: the HD model shares the same MT8698D SoC, the same G310V2 GPU, and the same VPU decoder block as the Fire Stick 4K Select. Both chips decode 4K video in hardware. Amazon's 2025 Fire Stick 4K Plus uses the MT8696D, a step up, but the HD and 4K Select are functionally identical silicon. The HD versus 4K ceiling is a software lock, not a hardware limit.
Read the full teardown for the die photography and the component-level breakdown of the PMIC. The interesting question the teardown raises but does not fully answer is whether the software restriction is enforceable or reversible. That is worth following.
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