Amazon Phone

woodhead 2

Anyone try one yet?

AsSiMiLaTeD

I've been testing one for a couple days now and am not all that impressed. I was going to do a full writeup on it here, but honestly it would end up being a regurgitation of the review Engadget has already done so I'm not going to bother doing a full review. The Engadget review fully captures my thoughts and experience with the phone, I'll provide a couple thoughts and then mention a few highlights below and then link the article.

I should mention that I've spent thousands of dollars and have been an Amazon Prime member for years now. So far I've had excellent luck overall with Amazon and their customer service. I've been cutting back there the last couple years to try and buy more local, but I still spend a good bit there and am probably their target customer with this device. That being said, we also tried the two latest iterations of their tablet and really didn't like either one that much.

Overall Thoughts
First, the whole phone feels like basically a vehicle to get you to buy more stuff on Amazon. I get that Apple and Google also try to push people to their online stores, but it feels a lot more pervasive in the Fire phone. Maybe that's more because Amazon sells everything under the sun more than the approach, but either way it feels like selling you stuff is the point of the phone. Some people may like how well it ties in with Amazon services, but I feel like the whole phone is mostly about that. Compare that to the iPhone or a Samsung or LG, and those phones at least 'feel' like they focus less on that.

Second, there are lots of features on the phone but most of them feel half-assed to me, great potential but none of them work very great. I'm sure that'll get better with time, but to have that be the focus of your product and not work that well seems like a problem to me.

Third, I was really looking forward to the camera on this phone. It has optical image stabilization and a fast lens and good resolution, I really expected something fantastic here given the specs. Instead we get a camera that produces mediocre results, it's not horrible but should be a lot better given the specs. By comparison, the camera on the iPhone 5S produces better photos in pretty much any scenario. I'm most puzzled by the camera, how Amazon managed to squeeze so little performance out of a camera with these specs is beyond me, but it's a major let down.

Highlights
- The phone looks ok and feels nice in the hand, but isn't going to win any design awards and not as nice as phones like the iPhone 5S or the HTC One
- I like the physical home button
- The display is bright but otherwise only OK, a little underwhelming for a phone that focuses so much on visual features like Dynamic Perspective
- Performance overall is good, the hardware seems plenty capable of running the features on the phone with the exception of some lag with the Dynamic Perspective which I think (hope) may be related more to that software
- Battery life is OK if you turn features off, but having dynamic perspective and FireFly active drains the battery fast, hopefully this gets fixed with a firmware patch
- It is AT&T only, I have a full retail price phone and even it won't run on T-Mobile
- The interface overall is unique, I don't personally like it that much but there's nothing wrong with it, just personal choice
- Dynamic Perspective is neat in theory and fun to play with, but is kinda gimmicky and doesn't actually work all that well
- It's about the same with FireFly, really neat when it works but frustrating when it doesn't
- There is no Google Play access, you have access to the Amazon app store but it's only fraction of what is available on the official Google or Apple stores
- I have a Pebble Steel smart watch, and the phone can't maintain a connection with the watch, Engadget mentions an issue with Bluetooth being the cause of that and it kinda sucks

I'm linking the Engadget review below, but you can just google reviews for this phone and they're all pretty much the same:
http://www.engadget.com/products/amazon/fire/phone/

WagnerRC

I have no interest in this phone. But thank you for the write up. Good stuff

woodhead 2

Yes, thanks for the write up. They make it sound better than what it is. You saved me some money....

AsSiMiLaTeD

This is kinda funny, but I have access to more Google services on my iPhone than I do on the Amazon phone. I never thought I'd say this about an Android phone, but the Amazon phone is actually more closed than our iPhones.

tophatjohnny

We all went with the LG G2 and that's a great little unit.