Fire Phone Sale! - $229 12/8

[Deeko]

Agreed, the screen is surprisingly good.

 

[lopri]

More on the screen: It is puzzling why I see jaggies on this phone. It has a similar PPI to the Nexus 4 yet I see jaggies on the stock icons' curves. It may have to do with the design of the icons and the 3D effect. Granted it is not visible unless I pay attention, but still it is a small blemish on otherwise the best LCD screen in this form factor. (better than the Nexus 5's screen, IMO)

I am debating whether to keep it, use it as it is, or root it and fool around. Lack of recent apps button is the first inconvenience that I am experiencing.

 

[lopri]

Has anyone else gotten this phone? I am seeing Fire OS draining unbelievable amount of battery. I am going to disable 3D stuff and see what happens. I have not popped in a SIM yet and the phone is on Airplane mode. CPU-awake-time is approximately 3 times the screen-on-time.

 

[Deeko]

I have it. My battery drain isn't too bad. Everything I've read said it improves quite a bit when you disable the head tracking stuff.

 

[Good4Me]

More on the screen: It is puzzling why I see jaggies on this phone. It has a similar PPI to the Nexus 4 yet I see jaggies on the stock icons' curves. It may have to do with the design of the icons and the 3D effect. Granted it is not visible unless I pay attention, but still it is a small blemish on otherwise the best LCD screen in this form factor. (better than the Nexus 5's screen, IMO)

I am debating whether to keep it, use it as it is, or root it and fool around. Lack of recent apps button is the first inconvenience that I am experiencing.

Doesn't double clicking the button on the bottom bring up recent apps?

 

[lopri]

It does! Thank you. I had no idea.

From my brief search on XDA root access is not yet possible on my phone which came with Fire OS 3.6.8 . Sideloading APK works thankfully.

Edit: Disabling 3D stuff seem to have made a marked difference indeed. I am going to experiment to find out which ones are most culpable for battery drain. I kind of like swivel to drop down notification and auto-scrolling pages. Hope those are not the worst offenders.

 

[lopri]

No notification LED on this phone? How could this be? The phone has 5 camera lenses on the front..

The phone does not support USB OTG but I can deal with it because 32 GB is awesome for a phone that is practically $100, but I am uneasy about the lack of notification LED. I have grown to rely on it.

 

[Deeko]

There's a nice tutorial on XDA for how to install the Google Play store and Play Services on the Fire Phone. It's quite easy, and works well. It wasn't missing a ton of apps that I use regularly, but some of them (Hangouts, Maps, Xbox Music) I use pretty heavily, so it's definitely been a nice improvement.

 

[lopri]

What YouTube app do people use on this phone?

BTW, my phone developed a vibration noise in the earpiece during conversations. Does anyone else have this problem when hearing voice over the phone? I wonder if it has to do with swivel gesture. I have been using that gesture to read notifications.

Edit: Mine is getting replaced. Amazon's service is awesome as always.

 

[zerogear]

Still $180 too much.

 

[Deeko]

Still $180 too much.

Comments like this leave me fairly certain that the person commenting has limited experience with phones in that price range.

 

[zerogear]

Comments like this leave me fairly certain that the person commenting has limited experience with phones in that price range.

Maybe, as I avoid budget phones except for maybe Xiaomi, but I had a Fire Phone (returned after 3 days). It's worth about $50 to me.

 

[lopri]

Are apps you download/buy at the Amazon Appstore associated with your account? I received the replacement but I want to test out free apps on the old phone before I set up the new one. For example, if I buy an app for $3 from Amazon Appstore on a regular Android phone, will I be able to redownload it on a new phone using the same Amazon login?

 

[lopri]

Also, is there a way to change the wallpaper on home screen? I installed Action Launcher and was happy to find out that I can customize everything else, but I cannot change the freaking wallpaper!

 

[cronos]

Are apps you download/buy at the Amazon Appstore associated with your account? I received the replacement but I want to test out free apps on the old phone before I set up the new one. For example, if I buy an app for $3 from Amazon Appstore on a regular Android phone, will I be able to redownload it on a new phone using the same Amazon login?

Yes. It's just like play store apps. Apps are tied to account.

 

[Graze]

Maybe, as I avoid budget phones except for maybe Xiaomi, but I had a Fire Phone (returned after 3 days). It's worth about $50 to me.

I wouldn't use this phone even if it was given to me for free unfortunately

 

[Deeko]

Maybe, as I avoid budget phones except for maybe Xiaomi, but I had a Fire Phone (returned after 3 days). It's worth about $50 to me.

They have low resolution screens (854x480 usually), horrible cameras, often no front camera, 512 Mb or so of ram, and barely even function. Clearly the Fire Phone can't compete with top end phones, but compared to the garbage that sells under $100 is night and day.

 

[lopri]

The replacement has a slightly different settings menu screen. The options are the same but categorized differently. Both have exact same version of the OS (3.6.8) and build number. Weird.

 

[lopri]

They have low resolution screens (854x480 usually), horrible cameras, often no front camera, 512 Mb or so of ram, and barely even function. Clearly the Fire Phone can't compete with top end phones, but compared to the garbage that sells under $100 is night and day.

I do understand why some folks would not use this phone at any cost, knowing that most people carry only one phone. I, for instance, would not use iPhone 6 unless I get paid. The Fire OS is similarly locked and closed, and there is an unmistakable presence of Amazon on the phone's OS trying to sell their services. And for those who rely heavily on Google services may miss out some key functionalities such as Google Now.

I have been kind of bored of the Nexus 4/5 after 2 years, and the Nexus 6 threw a monkey wrench on my plan to get a phablet this year. I long ago would have gotten the Note 4 which, IMO, is the best phablet ever made, had I known ahead the drama unfolded surrounding the Nexus 6's launch.

I ended up impulsing on Xperia Z Ultra and Fire Phone, and I am satisfied with both purchases. Hardware-wise, Fire Phone feels like an updated Nexus 5 in every regard minus 1080p. Better screen, speaker, call quality, camera, and better build quality, etc. Most of its negatives are on the software side, but like I said I am sort of bored of Nexus experience after 2 years (during which I enjoyed it immensely) and wanted to try something different. For an effective price of $100, the hardware is an unbeatable value.

Fire phone would not have been my first Android phone, and it probably won't be my long-term platform (without root access at least), but I am very satisfied with the hardware so far. I just do not think this is the phone for everyone, in spit of the bargain aspect of hardware, because of its software.

 

[Deeko]

I have Google Now installed on my Fire Phone and it works great. And no offense, but opting to use the type of phone I described above over a completely free iPhone 6s would be a strange decision. Even if you don't like iOS (I certainly do not) it's a far superior device.

For what its worth, my unlocked Fire Phone has looked like your screenshot on the right from day one.

 

[lupi]

The replacement has a slightly different settings menu screen. The options are the same but categorized differently. Both have exact same version of the OS (3.6.8) and build number. Weird.

there is a setting on the left side to show 2 versions of the options menu.

 

[lopri]

@Deeko: It was my reading comprehension fail. Heh. I would use iPhones over Windows phones any day. What I meant was that I would choose competent Android phones and Fire phones over iPhones. Since the reality is that there are plenty of competitive Android phones, I would not go out to buy/use iPhones. That's what I meant to say.

@lupi: Thank you. Learn something new every day.

 

[lopri]

Just when I thought I would give a shot at what it is like to live with ads, I learned how to block them on this phone using a simple APN trick and Adblock Plus.

Adblock Plus APK Download: https://adblockplus.org/en/android

1. Install the APK using a file manager or via ADB. Open it on the phone and configure it to your liking.

2. Create a new APN and give it a name you want. You can edit the existing APN (most likely "phone" on AT&T) but since this phone does not lets you duplicate or back up APN I made a new one so that I can delete it in case something doesn't work.

Name: (make it up)
APN: pta
[B]Proxy: localhost[/B]
[B]Port: 2020[/B]
MMSC: http://mmsc.mobile.att.net
MMS Proxy: proxy.mobile.att.net
MMS port: 80
MCC: 310
MNC: 410
Auth: none
APN type: default,mms,supl,hipri

3. Save and Select the APN.
4. Reboot the phone.

Ads now should be blocked. If you experience connection problems, try changing ABP's settings. A reboot may be necessary for the change to take effect.

P.S. Fire Phone's default browser Silk seems to be worst at working with ABP, and I expected nothing less. I suppose everyone here is using a different browser than Silk. I use Lightning+ and Opera.

 

[lopri]

Just in case, the above step requires allowing non-Amazon apps to be installed.

 

[lupi]

still learning some things with the phone, but so far wife loving it.