The Amazon Fire Phone, the company's first smartphone, will be released on July 25. It runs on Amazon's Fire OS, which is a heavily modified version of Google's Android OS, and is being sold for $200 on-contract with exclusive provider AT&T, which includes a limited time offer of a one-year free access to the $99 Amazon Prime service for shipping and media streaming.
The Fire Phone features a 4.7-inch high-definition screen, a Snapdragon 800 processor and storage space of 32GB. The rounded corners of the smartphone's frame gives it a look similar to Apple's iPhone, but it weighs heavier at 160 grams compared to the iPhone 5S's weight of 112 grams. The Fire Phone's aesthetics are nondescript, especially compared to the non-traditional designs of Amazon's Kindle Fire HDX tablet line.
The Fire Phone seamlessly integrates the Amazon store into its OS, which is magnified by the Firefly app that scans objects, listens to songs, identifies other content, and then links the user to the Amazon store to the page of the identified item for purchase. However, while the feature works at times and is very useful, it is far from perfect.
Another new feature on the Fire Phone is Dynamic Perspective, which uses the phone's four front-facing infrared cameras and infrared LEDs to track the face of the user, allowing the display on the phone to adjust by tilting the device or by moving the user's head. While the feature is something new, it is seen by most as a gimmick that wears off on its novelty after a while of using the Fire Phone.
Despite the new features and the reported four years that the company spent on developing the Fire Phone, reviews on the smartphone detail its lack of firepower to compete with Apple's iPhone 5S and Samsung's Galaxy S5.
One of the glaring omissions in the device is the lack of access to the Google Play Store, providing access only to the much smaller Amazon App store.
Wall Street Journal: "The $199 phone is packed with a number of such technological bells and whistles that seem clever, for about a day. Amazon has taken worthwhile steps to simplify using the Android operating system, but on the smartphone fundamentals, the Fire stumbles... Entering the smartphone market so late, Amazon might have stuck to its mission of ever cheaper, easier and more efficient-perhaps making an inexpensive handset or an extra long-lasting battery... The phone handset business is in need of new ideas, so I'm actually rooting for Amazon to make inroads that might disrupt the giants. But Amazon's first Fire isn't going to spark much."
Gizmodo: "Fire OS, Amazon's unrecognizable fork of Android, has moved past the awkward teen years. But Fire OS 3.5 often feels better-suited to the tablets it was originally meant for than it does a phone... But the big Fire OS omission that is still here and here to stay is the absence of Google's suite of apps... Dynamic Perspective is ostensibly the Fire Phone's killer feature... It's impressive tech! It's also pretty useless."
Fast Company: "The Fire phone's bigger problem is that it's decidedly a version 1.0 gadget... By deciding to scrap all the standard Android features, Amazon gave itself the dizzying challenge of writing its own versions of all the apps you assume a smartphone comes with... There's that word again--potential. The Fire phone is full of it, and laudable though that might be, it's not an argument for buying the phone right now."
Fox News: "The Amazon Fire Phone is really fun and has a lot of potential-especially as developers design more apps that take advantage of its Dynamic Perspective technology and Firefly feature. But this Amazon device may have Lilliputian appeal unless Amazon allows its users to enjoy the many popular apps available from Google's Play app store."
Huffington Post: "I've been using the Fire Phone, the long-anticipated smartphone from Amazon, for the last few days. It's a fine phone... But I'm not going to buy it... Fire OS, Amazon's Android-based-but-not-actually-Android operating system, is incredibly easy to use... But since it's not Android, you don't have access to Android's huge app store... Amazon is asking a lot of customers who switch to the Fire Phone... I doubt that Firefly, Dynamic Perspective and easy shopping on Amazon is going to seriously test that loyalty."
With reviews mostly saying that the Amazon Fire Phone is found lacking compared to its competition, it can be expected that sales for the new device will not go as well as Amazon would have hoped.
