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- It looks like my speculation about the apparent confusion in Salke's statements was correct. Endgaget has learned that she was speaking in reference to the Amazon Prime Video app, and not an upcoming phone.
Most of us probably remember the Fire Phone, which was Amazon's first and last effort in the market. The device ran a heavily modified version of Android, and though it packed some interesting face-tracking technology, the interface itself was pretty godawful. Its mediocre specs were paired with an astronomical price tag, and just a bit over one year later, the Fire Phone finally burnt out. Now, according to a recent report by TheWrap, Amazon's mobile ambitions might be preparing to pull a phoenix and rise from the Fire Phone's failed ashes.
Amazon famously misread the market when it launched the Fire Phone in 2014 without any Google apps. Scarcely a year later Amazon had abandoned the device in the face of minuscule sales figures. Now, it's rumored to be prepping a new smartphone, but unlike the Fire Phone, this one will apparently run a version of Android with Google services.
Once upon a time, Amazon made a phone. It was gimmicky and silly, and no one wanted to play with it. After realizing what a horrible mistake it had made, Amazon tried pawning off said phone for stupid-ridiculous prices.
Amazon's Fire Phone, the logical smartphone extension of its Kindle Fire tablet series, is a dud. A combination of lackluster reviews, carrier semi-exclusivity, and most of all being tied into Amazon's app and service environment have made it more or less a total failure. The company never publishes hard data for its hardware sales, but casual observation and constant discounts (sometimes more than $500 off of the original $650 off-contract price) imply that the product has been a wash.
When Amazon launched the Fire Phone, it wasn't a top-of-the-line device. It did, however, come with a $650 price tag. When the handset immediately proceeded to not sell, Amazon started slashing the price. We've spent the time since watching the number drop.Now the Fire Phone appears to be getting cheaper by the day. Just this weekend we saw the device hit eBay at only $140. Now the phone's Amazon price has fallen to 0.Note, this is the 32GB model. The 64GB one appears to be gone. But hey, you still get a year of Amazon Prime. That means you're only really spending maybe $30 on the hardware. We're not too far now from the point when Amazon is essentially giving these things away.Source: Amazon
Do you want an Amazon Fire Phone? If you do, I'll bet you want it at a discount - even with a free year of Amazon's Prime shipping/video/music service, it's a hard sell at two hundred bucks. It's a good thing, then, that the Fire Phone is so often on sale. The latest discount comes courtesy of an eBay seller, who's getting rid of the phones for as little as $140. That includes free shipping and free access to Prime, bringing the effective price down to $40 for a contract-free phone. Not bad.
On July 15th, Amazon is holding a big Prime Day sale that it says will offer more deals than Black Friday. You will also get to do without the lines, risk of being trampled, and having to get up from the Thanksgiving dinner table a mere five minutes after sitting down.The only catch is that you have to be an Amazon Prime member. That luxury costs a recurring $100 fee. But thanks to today's Goldbox Deal of the Day, you can get a full year of Prime along with an Amazon Fire Phone for 0. That's $20 less than the already low contract-free price it's going for these days.
Amazon Drops The Fire Phone Price Again: $179 Unlocked, Still Including A Year Of Prime ($100 Value)
If you're a patient deal hunter and you wait long enough, Amazon might just end up paying you to take the Fire Phone off its hands. If not, the price is pretty good at the moment: 9 for the unlocked 32GB model, without a contract to be seen. That's $10 down from where it was just a little more than a month ago, $270 off the original price, and a pretty awesome deal for a phone with a 4.7-inch 720p screen, a Snapdragon 800 processor, and 2GB of RAM... if you can stomach Amazon's Fire OS fork of Android.
The Fire Phone isn't like other Android phones. It doesn't have the Play Store, nor does it come with Google's suite of apps. Amazon has customized its smartphone enough to look like a different platform, which is how it could get away with running Android 4.2 for so long.But there are some features that Fire Phone users have had to do without (aside from the missing apps). With the latest jump from Fire OS version 3.6.8 to 4.6.1, that situation is changing. Amazon's handset now runs Android KitKat.
Android 4.4 brings support for Bluetooth Low Energy (commonly used in activity trackers and smartwatches), lockscreen notification improvements, printing, and other enhancements. KitKat is over a year and a half old, sure, but that's still newer than Jelly Bean.Here's the changelog Amazon has provided.
Amazon's interesting, unconventional, and unique self-branded phone has flopped hard. You know what that means, HP TouchPad and HTC First owners: rock-bottom prices. Amazon has discounted the unlocked 32GB model all the way down to 9, making it worthy of consideration for would-be buyers of the Moto G and similar mid-range devices. And that's before a year's worth of Amazon Prime ($100 value) for free, so you'll have plenty of movies, music, and cheap shipping to complement your new phone.
Let's be honest here - Amazon's Fire Phone was a complete flop. It makes a lot less sense than something like the Fire Tablets, which are at least somewhat useful outside of just being a front for Amazon's store (which is precisely what Fire Phone is). But the hardware is solid, and it's not a bad phone -- especially when you can get it for $199 off-contract and unlocked. Throw in a year of Amazon Prime, and you've basically got a really decent handset for a Benjamin. It's not perfect, but easily worth a hunnit.
The Amazon Fire Phone was never a bad phone per se, it just didn't come to market at the right price. At $199.99 with a two-year contract, the handset came in as an upstart thinking it had what it took to compete with the heavy hitters. Today, it's available at the more humbling price of 9 total.That's not a bad deal at all for an unlocked GSM device with a 4.7-inch display, 2.2GHz quad-core processor, 2GB of RAM, and a 13MP camera, especially when you consider the lack of a contract.
Sure, the Amazon Fire Phone still isn't your usual Android device. It doesn't come with access to the Play Store or Google's suite of apps. The handset is primarily good for making calls, consuming Amazon content, and enjoying all of those free apps of the day you've been stockpiling over the years. Or if you know someone who loves their Kindle Fire tablet that is still carrying around a flip phone, consider picking one up for them. You have just under 17 hours left to make a decision.Amazon Fire Phone 32GB on Amazon
Amazon is continuing to fiddle with the Fire Phone's software even after it became apparent that the device isn't selling terribly well. An OTA is going out right now to the AT&T and GSM unlocked devices with a ton of improvements to the camera, battery life, lock screen, and more.
Amazon was forced to concede that its much-anticipated Fire Phone was not a big seller when AT&T dropped the price mere weeks after it was released. When the retailer's quarterly results were announced, we learned the scale of the screw up. Now Amazon is washing its hands of the whole mess. It's unloading unsold 32GB Fire Phones unlocked for $199 off-contract. The off-contract price at launch was $650 and AT&T charged $199 with a 2-year agreement.
If you've taken enough photos to fill up the storage allotment on both Dropbox and Google Drive, and you happen to be an Amazon Prime subscriber, you might want to check out the somewhat nondescript Cloud Drive app. Starting today, Amazon Prime users get unlimited photo storage via the company's branded cloud storage solution. The default free level of generic storage, for Prime members and everyone else, is still the standard 5GB.
Shortly before jumping into the set top box race, Amazon unveiled that it was ready to bring exclusive games to its platforms. Since then, Amazon Game Studios has released a number of titles, with Sev Zero launching with the Fire TV, followed by Saber's Edge and To-Fu Fury for Fire Phone. Now we see three more that are currently in development: CreepStorm, Til Morning's Light, and Tales From Deep Space.
The Fire Phone is reportedly selling very poorly, but surely this will get things back on track. Amazon has released two new games (sort of) that include support for Dynamic Perspective on the Fire Phone. They're both free... if only you had a Fire Phone.
The Fire Phone is a tough sell when there are so many great Android devices available with Google services, and it looks like AT&T agrees. After just a few months of (reportedly) poor sales, the Fire Phone has dropped to just $0.99 with a new 2-year contract. I'm seeing shades of the HTC First here.
Amazon's first smartphone isn't that great, but the company is already moving to improve the experience with the device's first OTA update. This bumps the FireOS version up to 3.5.1, and includes a slew of new features and improvements:
By now, you've probably heard a lot about Amazon's Fire Phone. I figure that most people aren't really curious about what the overall phone is like – if you've used a Kindle Fire/HD/HDX then you already know. It's about Amazon services and a weird launcher layout thing. Most people are curious about the four front-facing cameras and Dynamic Perspective. I'm with you on that – that's exactly what I was curious about before getting this phone for review.