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.
The Fire Phone is an odd piece of hardware with a 4.7-inch 720p LCD, face-tracking IR cameras, 2GB of RAM, and a Snapdragon 800 processor. It's not bad hardware, but it's running Amazon's modified version of Android with no Google services. That proved to be a nonstarter for AT&T customers, but maybe for $200 unlocked?
Well, it's probably still not the best use of $200 (that's more than a 2013/2014 Moto G), but it's an option. The device has the necessary bands for networks like AT&T and T-Mobile in the US. It still comes with a full year of Amazon Prime, so it's kind of like a $99 phone.