Amazon Fire Phone

After years of speculation and rumor,
Amazon's first phone is here. The Amazon
Fire phone isn't just a smaller Kindle Fire
HDX tablet, though there are strong
resemblances. Like Amazon's tablets, the
phone runs Fire OS, a heavily customized
version of Android 4.2 with a carousel UI,
app drawer and access to Amazon's stores
and services. You'll use the Amazon App
Store to get apps (many popular titles from
Google Play are here, but not all) and the
phone is designed to put Amazon Prime
video, Kindle Books, Audible audio books,
Prime Music and cloud storage at your
fingertips. It's also clearly designed to get
you to buy more stuff from Amazon. Should
a phone do that? Not so much. Where the
Fire and Fire HDX tablets felt like an
affordable way to consume Kindle books
and Prime video, the Fire phone is enhanced
to sell, sell, sell. The Fire phone is available
in the US and only on AT&T at release. It
sells for $199 on contract for the 32 gig
model ($650 full retail) and $100 more for
the 64 gig version.

Dynamic Perspective
Two features stand out: the first is
Amazon's 3D dynamic perspective UI that
not only changes the angle of an object on
screen but allows you to see more of the
scene when you move the phone in any
direction. It's neat and uses 4 front cameras
plus 4 infrared LEDs (one of each at the four
corners) to determine your viewing point.
Right now, it's mostly a gimmick, but 3D
games put the feature to good use, as does
the Nokia HERE maps application and the
web browser for tilt scrolling. If you turn the
phone away from you to share the screen
with someone else, the cameras and LEDs
might not be able to discern proper
viewpoint, so the effect will stop. Likewise,
it's best to avoid blocking the corners with
your hands. Should you dislike the 3D
experience, you can turn it off in settings.
Likewise you can individually enable/disable
tilt scrolling and motion-based UI
navigation.

Firefly
The other salient feature, Firefly, uses the 13
megapixel rear camera to scan stuff...
generally so you can buy that stuff from
Amazon. Of course the company would love
you to use bricks and mortar stores in your
area as a showroom, scan the object of your
desire, then click the buy button when you
see it's a bit cheaper on Amazon. This isn't
just a barcode or QR scanner, it actually
uses the camera to see the entire object, be
it a book, a bag of potato chips or a music
CD jacket, then it recognizes that object and
provides a link to the product on
Amazon.com. You'll see little white dots
floating around the viewfinder, and these
"fireflies" coalesce around recognized bits,
like a book title, author or brand name. It's
hit or miss: it did great with Elizabeth
Bishop's collected poems (an old hardcover
edition, at that) but failed the flavor test with
a bag of Kettle potato chips (the bag was
original flavor in blue, but for some reason
Firefly recognized it as the red Sriracha
flavor). Firefly has utility beyond Amazon
shopping: aim it at your TV and it can
provide info for TV shows and movies, much
like Amazon's X-Ray feature, courtesy of
IMDB, which Amazon owns. It can scan
business cards and call numbers if you
point the camera at a printed phone number,
be it on a business card or a billboard. Is
this easier or quicker than simply dialing?
Not so much.

Specs
The Fire phone isn't a specs demon, but it's
not wildly far from flagship territory.
Amazon's counting on dynamic perspective,
Firefly and trust in their brand to drive
adoption, but flagship pricing will likely hurt
the phone in a world where Amazon's
tablets have been more affordable than the
competition feature for feature. The phone
has a 4.7" 1280 x 720 display, 4G LTE, a
2.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 quad
core processor with Adreno 330 graphics, 2
gigs of RAM and 32 or 64 gigs of storage.
The 2400 mAh battery is sealed inside and
there's no microSD card slot. The Fire has a
very capable 2.1MP front camera and a rear
13MP camera (both can shoot 1080p
video). Dual band WiFi 802.11ac, Bluetooth
3.0, NFC and a GPS with GLONASS round
out the features.