Gigabits: Amazon Fire Phone

Welcome to Gigabits, a new kind of post that gives you what you need to know.

Earlier today Amazon released their much rumored smartphone, now known as the Fire Phone. It is essentially another method Amazon has to get you to buy their services. It has mid-range specs with a 4.7 inch 720p display, 13 megapixel camera, 2GB of RAM, and Snapdragon processor. Nothing will really wow you here, but it will not let you down either. Amazon claims that the camera does better in low light than the competition, but we'll have to wait for some full reviews to agree with that. What Amazon lacks in hardware, they somewhat make up for in software. The Fire Phone's operating system looks very similar to that on the Kindle tablets, but it has a few extra tricks. It uses special sensors and four front-facing cameras to add some gesture and 3D effects. Your wallpapers have realistic depth to them, you can move your phone from side to side to get more information, and you can have menus slide out. These effects also take place in the browser by allowing you to scroll through text and galleries. You can find out what millions of different items are with Amazon's new Firefly service. When you take a picture of the item it can tell you what it is and of course, how much you can buy it for. Their is also Amazon's music streaming service, and cloud storage that you can use with the Fire Phone. There are many other services like the,, but unlimited photo storage is always a good thing. Besides Amazon's special gestures and services, the only other unique quality of the smartphone is that it comes with 24/7 Mayday service, if you constantly need help with your smartphone.

Overall the Amazon Fire Phone is not that amazing of a device. It has ho-hum specs, a pedestrian glass and plastic body, and only access to Amazon's app and media libraries. At $199 and $299 for 32GB and 64GB versions, it is priced squarely at the iPhone 5S, Samsung Galaxy S5, and HTC One. There is not much going for it when you could buy the vastly superior iPhone 5S for the same price. You would have to be deep into Amazon's ecosystem for the Fire Phone to make sense for you, or be incredibly bad at technology to warrant the use of Mayday. You would also have to be an AT&T customer, since the Fire Phone is exclusive to them. In the end, the Fire Phone is just another custom smartphone that isn't very appealing. Take that $200 and buy an iPhone 5S or Galaxy S5. They can serve you much better, and much more.

Pictures courtesy of The Verge

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