their OS without having to pay for it. However, you can only get Google Services (mainly the Play Store) when you purchase a license from Google. So even if you have used Android for years, if you pick up Amazon's Fire Tablet you probably wouldn't even know it was Android.
Back to the phone! Amazon threw the metaphoric kitchen sink at their phone in regards to software and tricks. They even brought the trivial 3-D back into the smartphone world. It has (and I'm not lying) four cameras on the front of the phone to watch your face to help control some of the software features. However, below I will discuss some of its features and why I personally don't think it will succeed.
1. Firefly
Firefly is a software feature in which you can scan almost anything with the rear camera, and it will transport you to a description of the item or to the product page. Scan a painting, and it will give you detailed information about the painting. Scan a jar of peanut butter and you will be taken to Amazon to buy it.
Is the neat? Yes. But there are apps everywhere that can already do this for you. And do you really need an even easier way to spend money then to just simply scan something and buy it off of Amazon?
2. Gesture Interface
In the software, certain things can be done by simply tilting the phone. Browsing a photo gallery, you can simply tilt the phone to go to the next Picture. While in maps, you can tilt the phone forward or backward to zoom in/out of the map. This also comes in to play with the cameras on front, when browsing a news article, it will track your eyes and scroll the page for you.
I'm sorry, but when did swiping your phone with your thumb or finger become so difficult? Personally, I don't want to tilt my phone when I'm trying to read or look at something. I can already see where the eye tracking can go awry when I'm reading an article (ever looked around a web page while reading?).
3. Apps???
To the all important app section. Remember at the beginning where I talked about Fire OS being a forked version of Google's Android? Amazon does not come with the Google Play Store. So any app you purchased on another Android phone, may not be here. Amazon's smartphone comes with their own App Store, which has a little over 240,000 apps. That definitely is a lot, but pales in comparison to the likes of the Play Store and Apple's App Store, which both have over one million apps.
The bad part here, is that when you have an Android phone, you can download the Amazon App Store. A lot of people i know do this because of Amazon's Free App of the Day feature.
4. Specs and Price
A quick rundown of the Fire Phone's specs gives you a 4.7inch 720p display, Snapdragon 800 processor at 2.2GHz, Adreno 330 GPU, 2GB of RAM, 32/64GB of storage, 13MP camera with OIS, and a 2400mAh battery. Although the screen resolution is extremely lacking in a sea of 1080p smartphones (not to mention the upcoming 2K display waves coming), the rest of the specs are very decent. With a lower resolution display and last years processor, you would think that Amazon would price this phone very competitively. Strangely, they did not. For the 32GB version, it is $199 on a two year contract. The 64GB version is $299 on a two year contract. What makes matters worse, when a lot of smartphone makers are trying to get into consumers pockets, Amazon (in my opinion) shoots itself in the foot and makes their phone a carrier exclusive to AT&T.
Having an Amazon app available on all the major smartphone platforms, makes me wonder what sense this phone makes. What are your thoughts?
