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New Amazon Device, June 18th

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Sheep said:
Carrier exclusivity, $200 subsidized with not a whole lot of advantages over the competition? Amazon Phone, meet Facebook Phone and Kin.
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Funny, I think T-Mobile's CEO said the same thing a couple days ago. Turns out he was right. 🙂
 
4.7" 720p, well it matches the galaxy nexus from 2011, and the galaxy S3 I suppose? lol

I'd of preferred 1080p
 
KeithP said:
No mention of battery life? That doesn't bode well.

-KeithP
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Battery size: 2400mAh. Talk time: up to 22 hours; standby time: up to 285 hours. Video playback: up to 11 hours; audio playback: up to 65 hours.

my previous link to amazon's website
 
Unoid said:
4.7" 720p, well it matches the galaxy nexus from 2011, and the galaxy S3 I suppose? lol

I'd of preferred 1080p
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I could live with a 720p display... if the phone was like $300. It's pretty funny that this is a $650 phone with a 720p display. I assume they did this because of the 3D experience. They apparently went with a Snapdragon 800 (last year's SoC) and the GPU probably couldn't handle 3D at 1080p. Just a guess. I don't think this was a wise sacrifice for the sake of 3D.

I'm just completely baffled by this choice of trying to revive 3D in a phone.
 
Well the free year of Prime does help the value proposition - if you're not an Amazon user, this phone isn't for you, but otherwise $100 subsidized is a bit more palatable. However in comparison to the Moto X and OnePlus One, it feels like this should have been $100 before the year of prime, with Amazon trusting greater engagement with their ecosystem to drive profits.

Firefly is interesting - less about sensors and more about smart data detectors and uses of big data - so they absolutely should release an iOS and Android app, especially as it always drives you to a product on Amazon.

Dynamic Perspective feels a little gimmicky and 4 cameras always looking at you when the phone is on, even in the dark with infrared sensors? I know there's nothing malicious but that made me cringe just a tad.

The motions + head detection may create reliable motion control, but the gains seems to be pretty trivial.

Overall - it's good to see some new thinking, but not exactly a must-have. I'd expect this to be free on contract in just a couple months with some firesales closer to the holidays.
 
Ravynmagi said:
Firefly is kind of a neat feature I'll admit. I think this has been tried before, was Google Goggles something similar? I'm sure Amazon is doing Firefly much better, it helps to already have such a massive catalog of items already. But sadly this is the only outstanding feature the phone seems to have, everything else was kinda mediocre. And I surely wouldn't buy a phone for this feature.

I'm an Amazon fan, but wow. I'm just shocked at how disappointing this is. I wasn't expecting anything great. But I was expecting the price to make up for it.
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Unlimited photo storage is going to be the biggest selling point imo.
 
Something else to keep in mind is lets not forget how Amazon treats it's tablets. Last year's model never gets the latest version of Fire OS. They just release a new tablet and forget about the previous model. So a Fire Phone with Fire OS 3.5 (with whatever version of Android under it) may never be updated to Fire OS 4.
 
Kaido said:
Unlimited photo storage is going to be the biggest selling point imo.
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I see some downsides to this.

The biggest is that "unlimited" applies only to photos taken on the Fire phone. If you have another camera(s) and would like to keep all your photos in the same place, you will (depending on the size of your photo library) have to pay Amazon to store those photos in the cloud.

Also, videos taken on the phone are not included in "unlimited" and you can't turn auto-save video cloud storage off separately from the photo storage. From Amazon's FAQ...
Can I upload just photos?
No. When you turn on Auto-Save, your Fire phone will upload both photos and videos.

What happens to my video uploads when I go over my Cloud Drive storage limit?
When you go over your storage limit, your Fire phone will not upload your videos. Photos taken with your Fire phone will continue to upload and will not count against your storage limit. You can buy more storage or delete existing content on Cloud Drive to make room for videos to upload.
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I think the unlimited photo storage is going to be a lot less useful in practice than it would initially seem.

-KeithP
 
KeithP said:
I think the unlimited photo storage is going to be a lot less useful in practice than it would initially seem.
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It has some catches, but you have to remember that we're looking at it from hardcore nerd POV's. The average mom out there just wants to take photos of their kids with their phones & never run out of space. The video thing is a hiccup, but at least photos are free. Apple is kind of mitigating their situation with 200gb for $4/month, but still...meh.
 
While not the most impressive release for a new product, it's better than a lot of other first offerings and Amazon is the type of company that will be able to keep iterating and gaining traction.
 
Kaido said:
It has some catches, but you have to remember that we're looking at it from hardcore nerd POV's. The average mom out there just wants to take photos of their kids with their phones & never run out of space. The video thing is a hiccup, but at least photos are free. Apple is kind of mitigating their situation with 200gb for $4/month, but still...meh.
Click to expand...

I don't see it as any killer feature because Google+ already gives you unlimited photo storage, and it's an app, so every Play Store accessing Android phone/tablet (as well as iPhones/iPads) can do it.
 
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Ravynmagi said:
I'm just completely baffled by this choice of trying to revive 3D in a phone.
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It worked so well for Nintendo with the 3DS, so much so they released a 2DS and are decidedly downplaying the 3D now. Oh, wait...

As a longtime Prime subscriber who's entrenched in Amazon's ecosystem with a decent library of Kindle books and who spends thousands of dollars yearly on Amazon.com, I should be the target audience for this. The only thing this managed to do is make me wonder WTF Amazon management was thinking releasing a 2011 phone in 2014 whose main gimmick is 3D which has pretty much failed across the board everywhere else it's ever been attempted. And the best part? It's expensive as hell (factoring in the subsidized price) and gets completely curb-stomped by the competition. GG Amazon, maybe next time.
 
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Kaido said:
Unlimited photo storage is going to be the biggest selling point imo.
Click to expand...

google gives you 15 gigs of space on google drive where android will auto upload images to if you have google plus. thats a ton of space for images and vids
 
Only being on AT&T is going to hurt sales. You are not going to sell it ton of phones in this day and age being only on one carrier. They should have never made it exclusive.
 
A 4.7" 720p phone that weighs the same as a Note 3? Hahahahahahahaha.

The only people I see buying this are the folks too fearful to get a smartphone without Mayday.
Ravynmagi said:
Other than the glass back, I love the look of the phone. This is how I like phones to look. All black, no silly faux chrome, faux aluminum, faux leather, faux whatever. Just simple and clean.
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Huge bezels without the excuse of speakers.
 
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