The Amazon’s first smartphone is finally official and the Fire Phone is supposedly the device that gets the world around you connected to the largest retailer store database, Amazon, by scanning them and provides you with the information you need about that specific scanned item, including an Amazon link to buy the product, connecting to 3rd party applications (iHeartRadio, MyFitnessPal and Vivino at the moment), a Wikipedia page, dialing a number, opening a webpage in a browser and many more.
Amazon Fire Phone General Specifications:
- 139.2mm x 66.5mm x 8.9mm, 160 grams
- 4.7" HD LCD display, 1280 x 720 pixels, 315 ppi
- 2.2GHz Quad-core Snapdragon 800 CPU, Adreno 330 GPU
- 2GB of RAM, 32/64 GB of Internal Memory, No microSD slot support
- 13MP/2.1MP Main and Front cameras, 1080p video recording
- Fire OS 3.5.0
- 802.11a/b/g/n/ac Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 3.0, NFC enabled
- 2400 mAh battery
The Fire Phone comes with a 720p screen, Snapdragon 800 and 2GB of RAM and if you are one of those who just care about benchmark results and hardware features comparison, this phone will definitely disappoint you. But on the contrary, if you care about software and user experience, it may grab your eyes.
Before getting to the software side, let’s review some of the hardware specs including the screen, and camera:
Screen: Although Amazon decided not to use a 1080p screen on the Fire Phone, but it doesn’t mean the current display doesn’t have a solid quality, specially considering the display at 590 nits you can easily see the screen outdoor.
Camera: First of all, the Fire Phone has a dedicated physical camera button (which you barely see on these days devices), and the 13MP main camera with optical image stabilization and a fast five-element wide aperture f/2.0 lens delivers some sharp and bright pictures. The Free, Unlimited Amazon Cloud Storage for taken shots with the Fire Phone is for those who love taking pictures without worrying about limited storage.
Now, let’s get to the software side by breaking a piece of good news: All the Fire Phone owners (for a limited time) will receive a full year of Amazon Prime for Free, which either extend your current membership or just create a new member.
But what about other software features?
Dynamic Perspective: This is both a software and hardware feature which enables you to communicate with your phone by Tilting, Swiveling, or Peeking it.
Firefly: It is the Amazon’s solution to see the world around you in a digital way. You just need to hold the camera in front of an object and let the Fire Phone discover the rest. It currently can identify over 100million items and counting.
It identifies bar codes, texts, poster, book or DVD covers and thanks to the Amazon’s rich database you are redirected to the very exact content as soon as the Firefly detects it. For example you hold the camera in front of a video game cover and this new feature takes you right to the buying page of that identified game. It is really cool, isn’t it?
The Fire Phone is also the first and only smartphone with Mayday (Amazon’s customer service), and the enhanced version of Home Carousel lets you “scroll, scan, and take action without opening the app or leaving the carousel”.
You also have access to the Fire OS 3.5.0 features as well as so many Android apps, games and tools via Amazon Appstore.
Fire Phone Price and Availability
Where to but the Fire Phone? Well, of course from the Amazon website. At the moment, has just started and you can get the unlocked version with 32GB of storage for $649 while the price increases to $749 for the 64GB version.
If you prefer to sign a 2-year contract and get the device, since AT&T is exclusively carrying the Fire Phone, you can have the 32GB version for $199 with AT&T.
Conclusion
What we like most about the Fire Phone is that while almost all the other OEMs (excluding Apple and Motorola) are struggling to announce their next flagships with the highest hardware specs possible, Amazon is focusing on the software side and instead of packing the Fire Phone with a 5.0-inch QHD display, Snapdragon 805 processor and 3GB of RAM, the company has decided to use an average specs to load the rich content available on the Fire Phone.
So, if you think this is just the phone for you, go to Amazon website, register your interest, and wait for the delivery starting from July 25.
Pre-order Fire Phone from Amazon
