Amazon's smartphone has been rumored for quite some time, but it is just now becoming a reality. It stands alongside the Kindle Fires as a portal into Amazon's vast and constantly growing ecosystem. Does Amazon's Fire Phone have the hardware and software chops to sway your wallet towards Bezos & Co? Let's find out.
The Fire Phone is not some spec monster like the Samsung Galaxy S5 or the HTC One M8, but do you really need all of that? Like Motorola did with the Moto X last year, Amazon thought that you need a phone that is enjoyable to use and that's it. Why does the number of gigahertz and cores matter if the phone already works perfectly? If you have yet to buy these excuses, the Fire Phone has a 4.7 inch 720p HD LCD display, a Qualcomm processor, 2GB of RAM, and an Adreno 330 GPU. This puts the Fire Phone behind most Android flagships and squarely in the mid-range section. Amazon has yet to specify which Qualcomm processor it usesy.
The physical feeling of the phone is one of the most important aspects, if not the most important. Usually people will not buy a slimy or cheap feeling device, but Samsung has proved me and thousands of other people wrong. Amazon has made the Fire Phone a very mundane, but not ugly, device. It has the usual glass front, some rubber sides, a glass back, and some aluminum buttons to class things up a bit. This is very similar to Google and LG's Nexus 4, but Amazon will probably have much more success with their smartphone. There's nothing wrong with the Fire Phone's design, it's just that it isn't very exciting. Motorola wowed us by allowing you to customize the Moto X in thousands of ways. HTC put the M8 in a few interesting colors, and even Google made a headache-inducing red Nexus 5. Amazon certainly has the minds and power to do something interesting, but it didn't.
Amazon's services are the biggest and most important weapons in its arsenal. Without the tons of books, songs, movies, and television shows that come with its services, their products would be close to worthless. No one would want a skinned Android phone without access to the Play Store and without a decent ecosystem. Amazon is combining Prime, Prime Music, and Amazon cloud drive to make you want their smartphone. Prime Music obviously comes with your Prime subscription and it works just like Spotify by allowing you to listen to songs and download them for offline use. Amazon has really surprised us by allowing unlimited photo storage with the Fire Phone on Amazon cloud drive. Hats off to Amazon by making a cloud that people will actually want to use.
Selling books got Amazon to be a popular brand. They make $5.25 billion off of it each year. In more recent years, they have grown to sell much more than books. Nowadays, people are buying everything they need from Amazon. Firefly allows you to recognize more than 100 million different items, and of course buy them. With Firefly, Amazon is making it easier for you to buy more stuff you do not need. Despite this, it is a very cool feature. Google has done it with their Goggles app, but it does not work most of the time. Firefly is a cool feature, that you might use eventually.
A device can only be truly amazing when the hardware and software combine to make a beautiful experience. Apple has done it with the MacBooks, iPhones, and iPads, and Google has almost done it with the Nexus devices. Amazon is trying to do this with their Fire Phone, and they have managed to do it pretty darn well. The operating system on the Fire Phone looks very similar to the Kindle Fire tablets with dark colors, clean icons and text, and many grids. The Fire Phone is slightly different because of its many menus and clever tricks. For example, you can tilt the phone in certain directions to get contextual menus. In the music app, their is a "delight" menu that gives you the lyrics of the song you are listening to. When shopping, you can tilt the phone to the side to scroll pass dresses or other clothing items. For reading articles on the web, you can tilt the phone up and down to scroll. Somehow, Amazon has managed to perfect these gestures in ways that no other manufacturer has managed to do so (Samsung). These are not just random silly features meant to catch your attention for two seconds (Samsung). Amazon has made intuitive gestures that allow you to use your smartphone in a better way, and we honestly like them a lot.
If you happen to be a tech nerd that has noticed the prototype of Amazon's phone, and how it had four front-facing cameras. The Fire Phone does have those four cameras, but it uses them in some great features. These four cameras combine to see where your face is, how far away it is from the camera, and how big it is. In short, it finds the X, Y, and Z coordinates of your head. Amazon uses this information to put 3D perspective elements in its UI and games. You can tilt your phone to look around the level of a game, see more information on a map, and stare at the cool background on your phone. Amazon is not the first to make a phone with 3D interfaces, see the LG Thrill 4G, HTC Evo 3D, and Nintendo 3DS, but they are the first to actually pull it off. You are not getting a ton of extra information with the Active widgets, but you are getting enough to make it worthwhile. The 3D isn't overwhelming right now, but fingers crossed Amazon keeps it toned down.
Overall the Amazon Fire Phone is not too much more than another smartphone. Amazon did put in decent specs with the Qualcomm processor, Adreno GPU, 13 megapixel f/2.0 camera, and HD display, but there is not anything exciting. There are four cameras that do some cool tricks and there is Mayday for when Grandma cannot figure out how to Google anything every single day, but is that really enough to sway people away from the Android flagships and the mighty iPhone? At $199 and $299 for 32GB and 64GB on contract, the pricing somewhat steers people away from the Fire Phone. It is also an AT&T exclusive, which only takes away millions of prospective buyers. Motorola's Moto X can be found on all major American carriers for a penny sometimes and you even get to customize it. Let's not forget the access to the Google Play Store. Amazon could have easily aggressively priced the Fire Phone, but it did not. This just makes me think of the unsuccessful HTC First, and how this might be Amazon's last.
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