New York Times:
Amazon on Wednesday introduced its own smartphone — a device optimized to allow customers to consume great amounts of video, books and music, preferably from Amazon.
Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s chief executive, announced the new phone, Fire, here in Seattle, the company’s headquarters.
Amazon executives asked themselves, Mr. Bezos said, only one question: “Can we build a better phone for our most engaged customers?”
“Our most engaged customers” seems to be the key here. What do you think? Is there anything compelling in the “AmaFone” for you?
I think a more honest name would be Amazon’s PrimePhone. Geared towards keeping the money train that is prime subscribers rumbling down the track into Amazon’s bank account.
If I was choosing between Android phones, I think the Fire phone has a lot of features on its side vs. other ones.
I don’t see it as something that can switch me away from iPhone though. The stuff I use Amazon for is covered just fine with existing apps. The hardware bells & whistles look like gimmicks.
Their “dynamic perspective” has been out several years already (courtesy of Nintendo 3DS).
Its an interesting phone, and I look forward to seeing how well it does. The product recognition seems to be just an improvement over what is already in the Amazon iPhone app … I wonder if Amazon will keep updating the iPhone app as well.
The 3D feature will only work as well as the apps that are designed for it which for a long time will probably just be the ones that Amazon provides.
The one-handed gestures didn’t really look that natural to me, although I would need to try it out to really decide how useful I would find it.
I’ll take the unlimited free photo upload option Apple (technically $99/year with Prime).
yawn
Amazon succeeded at one thing. Creating a phone with more gimmicks than a Samsung phone.
That’s not the same thing. 3DS uses a piece of hardware that creates a 3D effect. Fire phone uses cameras to track your head and then changes the image on screen.
This isn’t going to catch on, IMO. First off, the exclusive is dumb. You want as many people buying this turd as you can find. It’s not like buying a tablet, this thing comes with the baggage of a contract.
You can access all of the amazon services from an iPhone. You have a massive amount of quality apps on the iOS platform. Most people looking to buy android buy Samesung. The gimmick of 3D most people will likely turn off after a few days because they’re bored with it or it’s hard to work with.
I’m sure that’s great for battery life and performance.
They should keep updating the iPhone app. They aren’t in the business to sell phones, they’re in the business to sell products, and prime subscriptions. There is no reason for them to keep the software features as Fire exclusives.
“I wonder if Amazon will keep updating the iPhone app as well.” Of course they will. In the same way that iOS users are far more profitable for Google than Android, even Nexus, users, iOS users are far more lucrative for Amazon than even Kindle Fire users.
looks like a solid phone. If there’s no iPhone I wouldn’t mind getting one.
the unlimited storage for photos is a huge plus in my book.
Flickr’s “one terabyte free” of photo storage is, for the vast majority of people, “unlimited storage” of their phone photos.
Old tech with a gimmicky 3D feature running a forked version of Android. The laughable part is they’re pricing it as a premium smartphone! The hubris of Bezos is impressive.
This phone is DOA except for Amazon employees and Prime addicts in need of a feature phone.
What happens to your photos if you leave the Amazon ecosystem?
Any info on battery life? No way this suckers runs a day on a single charge with all those camera working when the phone is on.
it’ll still be on the Amazon cloud drive I believe.
Same issue with the iCloud.
well this automatically uploads, so it’s more comparable to Apple’s iCloud.
Setting up auto uploads to Flickr is simple using their own app or an IFTTT “recipe”.
If I wanted an Android phone, I’d probably pick it over the competition.
It’s probably not terrible, since they’re low-res IR cameras and it’s already rendering the screen anyway in a compositor that can probably get 3D at that level for basically free.
(I don’t expect it to be any worse than Apple’s gyro-based system with a really trivial bit of overhead for the cameras.
I don’t really think it’s a great feature, as described, but it’s not a negative.)
So, not automatic in the sense required?
“Just use IFTTT” means “not even possible” for almost all customers, remember, too.
Yeah, that’s a non-issue.
“Save your stuff locally if you actually care about it” is true no matter whose cloud storage you use.
Cloud storage is convenient against hardware loss; it’s not a real archive.
It says 11 hours.
Remember, those 3D cameras are low-res IR cameras ala the Kinect. They’re not HD full-color cameras, they’re just good enough for face tracking.
I see no obvious reason they should be a serious power drain.
I don’t know what “in the sense required” means. But the Flickr app will do auto uploads.
And I didn’t say “just use IFTTT”.
Not a fan of 3D anything, even turned off that parallax gimmick on my iPhone and iPad. The very idea of staring at my phone and jerking my head around like a friggin ostrich doesn’t grab me all that much either.
And while I do respect Amazon’s service, many of their recent actions make me want to buy elsewhere. Not interested in Prime or any other subscription service either.
I do have to give them some credit for the hardware design, it does look fine (personally also liked the glass back on the iPhone 4/4S better than the 5/5s design). Optical image stabilization and 32 GB standard are also not gimmicks, but good things. GUI does look messy though.
If the iPhone did not exist, I guess I would have a look at it.
Let’s see how it is. At the moment it sounds like there will be a battery hit.
I think they knocked it out the park for their ecosystem. They have some gimmickery for sure but the instant help, great camera, Prime, Firefly, and a great screen make for a great device.
It may not be a huge seller but their ecosystem is vast and ever growing. It’ll be interesting to see how well it does.
I’d like to see video of the presentation if it becomes available. From what I’ve heard, this phone sounds like something Amazon will pitch to folks who haven’t switched to smartphones yet. I can’t imagine a satisfied iPhone user having much of a reason to jump ship to Amazon’s ecosystem.
If you have a spare 1.5 hours: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w95kwXy_MOY.
Android Central and The Verge have hands-on. Topolsky said the UI is a mess on Twitter.
I doubt there is a phone on earth a satisfied iPhone user will jump to but this phone is a 100% ecosystem change so I doubt a disgruntled iPhone user will switch either.
At any given moment two IR lights are on, and at any given moment the two IR cameras next to those lights are shooting your face at 60 fps, then analyzing those 120 images recognizing the face in each, and computing your position in 3D space from every pair of image.
Doesn’t sound quite cheap, even with the low resolution.
I don’t know what “it’s already rendering the screen anyway in a compositor” means.
Re-rendering the screen does cost you battery. And 2D interfaces only render when there’s a change, and only the area of the screen that has changed.
Just because you have a GPU that can do 60fps without skipping a beat doesn’t mean it’s free in terms of battery life.
Don’t confuse performance and battery life.
Thanks; that’s what I was looking for.
I haven’t decided yet whose review I’m going to want to see yet.
No prob. I’m skimmed The Verge’s review. It was more positive than I thought.
This seems to be aimed at Sumsung more than Apple.
I’m waiting for a product from Amazon that will arbitrarily buy things without you intervening.
I don’t think they’re aiming at anyone. Amazon seems to work in their own bubble.
I’m not so sure about that. Their tablets appear to be popular with people who are only interested in inexpensive content consumption, which includes non-techie consumers and Apple-hating Windows enthusiasts.
I think everyone wants inexpensive content. 🙂
I’m not saying they aren’t competing against Apple, clearly they are, but aiming means they build the phone to target Apple. That I do not believe they did. Maybe with the camera since that was the only mention of Apple in the whole preso, from what I saw through pics.
And they blew it on the AT&T exclusive.
It’s not 2007 anymore.
Oh man…yeah. That’s a big point of confusion for me why anyone would do exclusives anymore.