Amazon Announces 'Fire Phone' 192
Amazon has unveiled the Fire Phone. It runs a modified version of Android, and it will launch exclusively for AT&T's network. The screen is a 4.7" IPS LCD (they tested from 4.3" to 5.5", and decided 4.7" worked best for single-hand use), with an emphasis on brightness. It runs on a quad-core 2.2GHz processor with 2GB of RAM, and an Adreno 330 GPU. It has a rear-facing, 13-megapixel camera using an f/2.0 five-element lens with image stabilization. There's a dedicated physical button on the side of the phone that will turn it on and put it into camera mode when pressed. The phone comes with dual stereo speakers that produce virtual surround sound. Amazon wants the phone to be distinctive for its ability to provide video content, both from a hardware and software perspective.
The Fire Phone runs Mayday, Amazon's live tech support service for devices. They also demonstrated Firefly, software that recognizes physical objects using the phone's camera, as well as TV shows and songs it hears. It runs quickly, often identifying things in less than a second (and it pulls up an Amazon product listing, of course). It can even recognize art. Firefly has its own dedicated physical button on the phone, and Amazon is providing a Firefly SDK to third parties who want to develop with it. Another major feature of the Fire Phone is what Amazon calls "dynamic perspective." Using multiple front-facing cameras, the phone tracks the position of a user's head, and uses that to slightly adjust what's displayed on the screen so content is easier to see from the new angle. It allows for gesture control of the phone — for example, you can tilt the phone to scroll a web page or move your head slightly look around a 2-D stadium image when browsing for available seats. Putting your thumb on the screen acts like a mute button for the head tracking, so it isn't confused when you look up from the screen or turn your head to talk to somebody. It's an impressive piece of software, and they've made an SDK available for it.
The Fire Phone runs Mayday, Amazon's live tech support service for devices. They also demonstrated Firefly, software that recognizes physical objects using the phone's camera, as well as TV shows and songs it hears. It runs quickly, often identifying things in less than a second (and it pulls up an Amazon product listing, of course). It can even recognize art. Firefly has its own dedicated physical button on the phone, and Amazon is providing a Firefly SDK to third parties who want to develop with it. Another major feature of the Fire Phone is what Amazon calls "dynamic perspective." Using multiple front-facing cameras, the phone tracks the position of a user's head, and uses that to slightly adjust what's displayed on the screen so content is easier to see from the new angle. It allows for gesture control of the phone — for example, you can tilt the phone to scroll a web page or move your head slightly look around a 2-D stadium image when browsing for available seats. Putting your thumb on the screen acts like a mute button for the head tracking, so it isn't confused when you look up from the screen or turn your head to talk to somebody. It's an impressive piece of software, and they've made an SDK available for it.
Perhaps not the best name (Score:5, Funny)
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Perhaps one of the buttons can be set to directly call the Fire Dept.
Re:Perhaps not the best name (Score:5, Funny)
Perhaps one of the buttons can be set to directly call the Fire Dept.
Mayday, perhaps?
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Probably easier to remember than 0118 999 881 999 119 7253.
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At least it's not a new phone from Sony themselves.
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Re:Perhaps not the best name (Score:4, Funny)
Yeah, "halt and catch fire" has a new meaning when the device has a lithium battery.
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It's probably not the best name for any device.
I can see people going to a Fire Phone sale thinking they were going to get phones at a heavy discount. And you could describe early adopters of this phone as having caught onto fire.
It's just a bad name in general.
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Re:Anyone else think Neo900 is too little, too lat (Score:5, Interesting)
My enthusiasm is dead not because of the tech, but because of all the handcuffs that come with today's devices.
This stupid Amazon phone, for instance, only works on the AT&T network. WTF? AT&T is probably the worst of the bunch. That alone disqualifies it for me. The bit about it spamming me with Amazon ads doesn't help. I don't need a phone that tries to sell me stuff.
Other Android phones aren't much better; they're closed-source and don't get updates for more than a few months after they're released. CyanogenMod may be a good alternative here, but you have to select your phone carefully here since only a few select phones have good CM support.
Apple phones are the epitome of lock-in. And Windows phones are, well, Windows phones.
What I want is a well-made Android phone that runs CyanogenMod, has an easily-replaced battery and SD card, and works on T-mobile (at least until they get consumed by some shitty company like Verizon).
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Re:Anyone else think Neo900 is too little, too lat (Score:4, Interesting)
What I want is a well-made Android phone that runs CyanogenMod, has an easily-replaced battery and SD card, and works on T-mobile (at least until they get consumed by some shitty company like Verizon).
How about a Galaxy S4? That's what I'm running. I have a Sprint-branded model running on Verizon MVNO prepaid (only carrier around here - sounds like it's different where you live). I got mine from Amazon, as it happens - looks like they have a T-Mobile [amazon.com] model too.
Mine's running 4.4.2 CM milestone, fully encrypted. 64GB SanDisk SDHC (make sure you do an aligned format under Linux) w/ Incipio Dual Pro case. Battery pops out on demand. Make sure you get Odin for Windows if you intend to install custom ROM's.
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Thanks, I'll check it out. I'd like to just keep my HTC Sensation 4G, but it doesn't seem to be that well supported by CM.
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Wait, the fact that it's a $200+ physical shopping app with monthly charges doesn't bother you?
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Did you miss this line? "I don't need a phone that tries to sell me stuff."
Besides, you're not paying to be sold stuff, you're paying for a phone and the other functionality that comes with that. But the shopping stuff is an add-on that spoils the utility of the device IMO.
Still, I wonder how good the hardware is. If the phone is being subsidized by Amazon, and if CyanogenMod can make a new firmware for it (which doesn't have any shopping stuff or other crapware), then it might be worth it. Of course, A
Re:Anyone else think Neo900 is too little, too lat (Score:5, Interesting)
Have you considered a Fairphone to meet your specifications, which among many other redeeming qualities prides itself on its repairability, which includes being able to root your own phone whenever you want? So you can install CyanogenMod, or perhaps Jolla's Sailfish OS (that can also run Droid apps). It has a *lot* going for it, especially its designer's goal of staying out of the scrap heap as long as possible. About the only downside is the one attribute they didn't prioritize by design is being the fastest phone with the latest technology; but you must also consider the upsides when doing your own research to see if this is a good phone for you.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06... [nytimes.com]
https://www.fairphone.com/ [fairphone.com]
It uses a GSM SIM card, so it'll work on T-mobile worldwide as you require. I've held one and it's plenty classy in the hand.
Re: Anyone else think Neo900 is too little, too la (Score:2)
I ran into this issue since I'm on AT&T. Originally bought a Samsung Galaxy
S 5 and promptly returned it because it's currently not rootable. So then I bought an HTC One M8 when I found out there's manufacturer support for rooting. You can also wait for the Cyanogemod Official phone (looks pretty nice too)
Re: Anyone else think Neo900 is too little, too l (Score:2)
Oh, looks like Geohot figured out how to root the AT&T and Verizon S5s. Guess he gets the $18k bounty!
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My enthusiasm is dead not because of the tech, but because of all the handcuffs that come with today's devices.
That's because people just want a phone that also has the ability to browse the web and run applications. If you are one of the few that want a phone without such "handcuffs" to be able to use it for other things then go with a Nexus phone.
Apple phones are the epitome of lock-in.
You aren't "locked in", don't be ridiculous. That is just the excuse of lazy people, if you want to change there is nothing stopping you from changing though oddly enough it's often geeks complaining that they are "locked in" so what exactly is it that you are having so m
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Oh right, that's what I was thinking of.
Anyway, I can only hope the deal falls through for some reason. The state of telecom in this country is simply horrible, and another merger will only make it worse.
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Verizon and Sprint use a CDMA network that pretty much only exists in the US
Meet Japan, the 51st state...
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>I'm a geek, too, and I just want a phone that can browse and make phone calls.
Yeah, that'd be nice too, but (stock) Android is so unreliable it can't even do that very well. Almost every time I load the web browser on my phone, it crashes. On the second or third try, it'll work for a while. For many other tasks, it just hangs for 10-20 seconds with a blank screen before proceeding.
The whole reason I want an open-source phone is so I can remove all the crapware that the regular vendor-built Android so
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What's wrong with the Google Nexus as a nerd-friendly hackable phone?
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What's wrong with the Google Nexus as a nerd-friendly hackable phone?
Lack of a card slot and battery door. Otherwise nothing.
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What's wrong with the Google Nexus as a nerd-friendly hackable phone?Lack of a card slot and battery door. Otherwise nothing.
While I understand some people want the SDHC slot and a spare battery many of us use and have used Nexus 4 and Nexus 5 phones with no problems.
Way to completely fail to follow the conversation there, coward. I have an N4 and I even have a N7-2013 and the lack of a card slot is stupid and annoying in both cases. But then, I'm a nerd who hacks his Android devices. The lack of a card slot is unacceptable.
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You just load a rootkit or just go into developer mode if you want pure root: http://trendblog.net/how-to-ro... [trendblog.net]
As for the configuration, its hackable. Load the OS configuration you want.
Nexus hackable about as long as locked devices (Score:2)
What's wrong with the Google Nexus as a nerd-friendly hackable phone?
Mostly nothing - except for the Nexus One, which got orphaned at gingerbread after 18 months (vaguely understandable, since it was underpowered) and the Galaxy Nexus, which got orphaned at about 2 years (which stinks, because it still has plenty of power).
I'm on the Nexus 4, hoping it doesn't meet a similar fate. This thing has plenty of life left in it, and if Google/LG went with components for which drivers become unavaliable at the next major Android update, I'm giving up...
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Estimated price is between $800 and $1150. For a phone with an 800x480 screen? Seriously?
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Yeah, it could be that, but it's actually $650 off-contract.
prices (Score:4, Informative)
According to AT&T's site, the phone will cost $199 with a two-year contract for a 32GB device and $299 for a 64GB device. The phone will cost $650 off-contract, which is common for high-end smartphones.
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None of the top-100 off-contract smartphones on Amazon.com are more than $250. I'm sure there are off-contract phones that cost $650+, but not a lot of people are buying them on Amazon.
http://www.amazon.com/Best-Sel... [amazon.com]
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but not a lot of people are buying them on Amazon
Yup. The top two selling phones are Windows, so obviously Amazon top-100 sellers are not representative of larger trends in the marketplace.
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The off-contract Fire Phone is still locked to ATT.
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Yeah, but I am fairly certain one will be able to buy an Amazon Fire Phone, unless one is really lucky at begging, one cannot buy a Oneplus One.
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I wonder if this price is more about maintaining AT&T exclusivity than being a real reflection of the phone cost. Still, I think the contract requirement while being tied to a single network is going to be a deal breaker.
Sounds cool except for ATT (Score:2)
Can't wait for the phones to be available used. Well, yes, yes I can wait, especially until I hear whether there's going to be a uSD slot
Holy crap that's expensive (Score:3)
cite [go.com]. Even if that's a misprint and that's the price without a contract, that is WAY too much money!
It is amazing how much phone you can get for $100 now - GPS, decently high-res screen, MicroSD slot. If you ask me the movement is towards off-contract phones that provide a decent value, and $749 phones are going the way of the $3500 PC.
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What's funny is that for a lot of us, our first PC probably cost around 3500$ back in the day and now most people think the Mac Pro is a really expensive computer.
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What's funny is that for a lot of us, our first PC probably cost around 3500$ back in the day and now most people think the Mac Pro is a really expensive computer.
That's true. But when I bought my first computer, there wasn't one sitting next to it for $200.
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A walk down memory lane:
Macintosh 128k: January 24, 1984: US$2,495
Macintosh 512k: September 10, 1984: US$2,795
Macintosh XL: January 1, 1985: US$3,995
Macintosh Plus: January 16, 1986: US$2,599
Macintosh 512Ke: April 14, 1986: US$2,000
Macintosh SE: March 2, 1987: US$2,900 (dual floppy) US$3,900 (with 20 MB hard drive)
Macintosh II: March 2, 1987: US$5,500
Macintosh IIx: September 19, 1988: US$7,800
Macintosh SE/30: January 19, 1989: US$6,500
Macintosh IIcx: March 7, 1989: US$5
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Once you have several phones the cost of an on-contract phone is $40 including $17 (though usually closer to $20+) in subsidy i.e. only really about $18-23 on contract + $5g for extra data. The off contract prices in the USA aren't close to that low.
For an individual off contract makes a lot of sense but once you are buying 2, 3, 4 the on-contract experience is just too good.
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A lot of people spend a lot of time on their phone. Maybe 30 minutes or more. If your phone lasts you a couple years, paying a dollar a day for a phone that is (and let's be honest) substantially better is probably worth it.
If you don't use your cell except for emergency phone calls, yeah what the hell, get whatever's cheapest.
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$400 LG G2s are nowhere near as good as a $650 Galaxy S5, though. I can't tell strangers how to spend their money, but personally most people I know, and myself, use their cell phone enough that it's worth spending an extra $250 spread out over the course of two years.
And whether you have a 2-year contract or not is basically not a factor, my wife and I don't, and it seems T-Mobile and AT&T have both made monthly plans the focus of their marketing. I just said 2 years because that makes it about a dol
Re: Holy crap that's expensive (Score:2)
How so? LG G2 has a similar processor as the S5 (Snapdragon 800 vs 801) but a larger screen and similar camera. Plus all carrier variants of the G2 are rootable now. That's not the case for the S5.
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S5 is smaller, better screen (even if it's .1" smaller), better camera, faster, has a micro SD slot, replaceable batter better build quality (my wife recently got the S5 over the similar Nexus 5). Water resistance is kind of cool, I've heard of people destroying their phones that way.
Not that the G2 is a crap phone, I just think something you spend a lot of time on is probably worth spending an extra $.35/day or whatever that works out to.
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A lot of people spend a lot of time on their phone. Maybe 30 minutes or more. If your phone lasts you a couple years, paying a dollar a day for a phone that is (and let's be honest) substantially better is probably worth it.
If you don't use your cell except for emergency phone calls, yeah what the hell, get whatever's cheapest.
If we're actually going to use logic on this... You're likely to drop/break that phone in the first 6 months. We either need more durable phones are cheaper phones. Less durable, more expensive phones are definitely the wrong direction. I had a Chinese phone for a while that was waterproof, shock proof, dual sims, etc... I loved that phone but it only worked on 1 US carrier and they dont have service where I live now.
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If we're actually going to use logic on this... You're likely to drop/break that phone in the first 6 months.
I've never broken a phone. If 6 months was the expected lifetime, I'd pay extra for some kind of insurance plan.
Chinese phones work on unlocked GSM and work fine on AT&T, TMobile, or all the various cheap monthly plan services.
GSM vs. CDMA2000 (Score:2)
Chinese phones work on unlocked GSM and work fine on AT&T, TMobile, or all the various cheap monthly plan services.
That's fine for voice, but data is painful unless a phone can use the same UMTS or LTE frequency as AT&T or T-Mobile. And no, not "all the various cheap monthly plan services" work with "unlocked GSM". Sprint MVNOs in particular work with Sprint-blessed devices because Sprint uses some variant of CDMA2000 and will probably continue to do so until VoLTE matures. Besides, I get the impression that the only carrier that works in Charliemopps's neck of the woods is Verizon, another CDMA2000 carrier. Am I ri
Nooooo... $199 on contract. (Score:4, Interesting)
Is it locked to the Amazon app store like... (Score:5, Interesting)
...the rest of their stuff?
If so, not only a "no thanks" but I would like to add a "I hope you die a flaming fiery death and nobody is stupid enough to buy you..."
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Of course it is - they're running a heavily modified version of AOSP, not Android.
Even if Android and the Play store were free and open, Amazon wants you to buy shit from their own store, not Google's.
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The A in AOSP stands for...
Re:Is it locked to the Amazon app store like... (Score:4, Informative)
That may have been true in their first release, but Fire devices have been able to incorporate Google Play for a while now. There as "Apps from unknown sources" option now. Though it still a little tricky to copy over the apx file.
http://www.gizmag.com/how-to-i... [gizmag.com]
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I assume the parent is actually meaning applications that use Google Play Services (http://developer.android.com/google/play-services/index.html). These will never work on any Fire product.
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sideloading an APK is not incorporating Google Play.
Re: Is it locked to the Amazon app store like... (Score:3)
There's always going to be a flaw such that a new ROM can be installed. It's just a matter if whether there are enough interested technical people to figure it out. The Kindle Fires are rootable and have Cyanogenmod ROMs.
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Get an HTC. [htcdev.com] That's what I did. The HTC One M8 is a pretty solid phone. Or get a Nexus phone or the OnePlus One.
Unknown sources (Score:2)
Yes, it is locked to the Amazon ecosystem. There is no access to Google Play, or anything else.
No access to Google Play I can understand. But if "anything else" is true, it'd be a departure from Amazon's previous Kindle Fire tablets that have one checkbox to allow installation of applications from unknown sources and another checkbox to allow installation of applications through a USB connection to a computer running Android Debug Bridge.
AT&T exclusive? (Score:2)
So much for being free of old-tech companies. I guess the "free to use" phone will have to come from Google.
"Fire Phone", "Mayday service" (Score:2)
Kindle, ... fire ... next in line is: (Score:2)
Resolution is 1280x720 (Score:5, Insightful)
This thing should fail and fail hard.
AT&T only.
1280x720 resolution.
$649 or ridiculous contracts.
No external sd support.
Not real Android.
No Google Play store or Google apps.
Weakly specced.
Nonstop monitoring and control by Amazon.
It's going to sell like fucking hotcakes, isn't it?
Re:Resolution is 1280x720 (Score:5, Insightful)
Never underestimate the stupidity of the general public.
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I don't think it will sell to well. The Kindle Fire had the advantage that it was cheap... This isn't really that cheap.
Apple iPhone or the Samsung Galaxy looks sharp. This just looks like generic Smart phone.
The feature that is has is cool for a few seconds then you get sick of them.
How is it weakly spec'd (Score:2)
Specs look in line with other phones to me. The Note 3, which ran me like $700 (no contract), is 2.3Ghz quad core and an Adreno 330. So this seems pretty similar.
Only thing I see is the screen rez, but that really isn't that big a deal. The ultra high rez for phones thing is a little silly. Once you get around 300PPI or so, which this is, there really isn't any visual detail to be gained. Pixels are too small to be perceptible. So it is spec wanking to go higher and higher on small displays.
Criticizing the
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The Note 3 has a 1920x1080 screen (ruined by fucking pentile though), has a stylus, has a larger screen (obviously), runs real Android and comes with Google's apps and the Play store, has much better battery life, supports micro SD cards, supports all carriers and bands, and will have been on the market for 10 months (almost an eon in the mobile world) before Amazon's phone is in anyone's hands.
For the Fire Phone to be similar (yet obviously inferior) to a phone that's nearly a year older isn't a good thing
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1280x720 resolution on a 4.7" screen is plenty.
My Moto X and Nexus 4 are both clear. of course they're both half the price of Amazon's offering.
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On one hand you want Google Play store and Google apps but on the other you don't want Nonstop monitoring.
hmm.
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iPhone has similar pixel density, actually.
But the CPU and RAM specs are nearly meaningless when considering that the OSes that run on top of them are wildly different, and the CPUs themselves are also likely to be different. I don't think this is running the 64 bit variant of the Snapdragon 800 CPU either. That's not to say that Apple couldn't stand to have an iOS device with more than 1GB of ram though.
In real world benchmarks the A7 still holds its own against existing Snapdragon 800 powered devices and
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Yeah, but in the real world specs matter less and less.
We also don't know what Amazon's paying for their parts, or what their expected profit margins are. If they're finally looking to make money off of ... well anything at this point, then $650 price point seems about right.
Hard to see the point (Score:5, Funny)
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I agree. The AT&T exclusivity is particularly unappealing. Does Amazon think they have something desirable here? Where is the hook that makes the exclusivity worth it? It's hard to fathom what they are thinking.
This reminds me of the ROKR E1 (Score:5, Interesting)
This phone strongly reminds me of the Motorola ROKR, a pre-iPhone device whose sole redeeming quality, vs. any other dumbphone of the time, was that it could play tracks you downloaded from iTunes and manually transferred to the phone over USB 1.0. It would only accept 100 songs and/or 1GB of files, whichever limit you hit first. It wouldn't play MP3's.
Amazon has released a phone that has nothing to distinguish itself from the competition other than the fact it is hog-tied to the Amazon ecosystem. It's does not have any particularly interesting features that could not be implemented in pure software, and the price is nothing to write home about either.
I don't see any reason why anybody would purchase this over the Moto G LTE, or any number of other smartphones that are available for a heckava lot less money. If you really don't mind being tied to a contract, there are better phones for less than the $200 they want.
Movies for Prime subscribers (Score:2)
Incredibly HOT product name (Score:2)
No doubt whoever came up with the name "fire phone" will continue to enjoy a long and prosperous career at amazon long after typing "fire phone" into Google and clicking image search.
Maybe this is for our parents? (Score:4, Interesting)
I haven't experienced it myself but when I see the Amazon Kindle Fire commercials where they demonstrate you can talk to a live Amazon person to help you use your tablet, my first thought was "that would be great for my parents", especially since it would lessen the number of calls I would get from them on how to do something with their technology device du jour.
You would think that something locked down like an iOS device wouldn't lend itself to needing this kind of tech support help, but in certain areas - especially phone calls - there's a certain level of resistance to technology complexity with the older crowd. It sounds like I'm being mean with regards to age but I have known several older people over the last few years who went out and bought an iPhone because it was the new shiny thing and then took it back because they couldn't figure out how to use it or didn't like how complicated it made things. As much as it makes perfect sense to you and I that the phone is a more generalized computing device nowadays and wanting to make a phone call is basically launching a program, the older set knows that you used to just open the fucking thing and start dialing.
I'm not sure if the Fire Phone will make all that better (in particular I can almost guarantee my parents in particular would fucking hate the 3D screen thing) but I do think perhaps there's an untapped market out there for people who want a less-smartphone. After all, isn't that basically what "locked down" Android tablets like the Kindle Fire and the Nook are? Google, Apple and Microsoft are all trying to outdo each other on technical whiz-bang, and this entry from Amazon doesn't seem to impress the Slashdot crowd at all. Maybe this one is for our parents?
As if the Android market needed more fragmentation (Score:2)
I hope this thing doesn't take off, or we'll have to test our apps on yet another device running a heavily polluted Android
Why get into the phone biz? (Score:2)
This is really all about their extra software. Why not just license it to phone mfgs?
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"People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware." - Alan Kay
Facebook tried that strategy and it failed miserably.
One could argue that Windows Phone and Android are living proof that this isn't a profitable strategy.
I'm not even joking about Android not being profitable for Google, or anyone else really. [nytimes.com]
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Dedicated camera button? (Score:2)
What?
I've had that since 2013 on my Sony Xperia ZL.
And even before that on the Sony Xperia Arc.
And even before that on the Sony Xperia X10 since 2011.
Poorly Priced (Score:2)
Let's see.... either you pay $199 and get locked into an AT&T contract and then have to pay even more money to get your phone unlocked at the end of it, or you pay $349 and get a Nexus 5/6 and use it with any carrier you want. Oh and did I mention it also has access to the Play store?
don't use video when Roaming att will bill $15+meg (Score:2)
don't use video when Roaming att will bill $15 + meg and no you can't unlock and use a local sim.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
The alternative to Apple's Walled Garden (Score:2)
Bezos' Walled Flea Market with Free Spyware
Let me guess... (Score:2)
They have patented the one-click photo taking with that button and everybody else now has to use at least 2 clicks to take a picture.
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I'm surprised AOL doesn't have a link on their homepage for you to click on. Remember, 'clicking' means left mouse button and 'right-clicking' is the right mouse button.
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$649 for the base one, the same as basically all other flagship smart phones... and other Android phones aren't spyware ridden?
Jeff, is that you?
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$649 for the base one, the same as basically all other flagship smart phones...
no flagship phone released in the last year has 1280x700-ish resolution.
regardless. you can't be a newcomer and expect people to pay the price that they're paying for established, loved brands. it's the same mistake made early on by android tablet makers. they released tablets that cost as much as an iPad. however, when people want an iPad, they're going to by an iPad if everything else is about equal (price, etc). the newcomer has to lure you in with lower prices or massively better specs (which is almost
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Microsoft says you shouldn't need ac. Just roll down the window.
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How exactly would this phone make it any easier?
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Nothing they can't put in a normal app.
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Nothing they can't put in a normal app.
That's true, but just because they could does not mean they (or someone else) will. My reading of the announcement is that Amazon feel this is a selling point.
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Yeah, being an AT&T exclusive is exactly why Apple's iPhone failed.
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Actually, now that you mention it, being AT&T exclusive pretty much is why Android is the world's most popular mobile OS and iOS is a minority operating system.
Meanwhile, is Amazon as good at this as Apple? Is it 2007, or 2014?