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After years of countless rumors and speculation, Amazon finally did the tech world a favor and made their upcoming smartphone — the Amazon Fire Phone — officially official. Launching this Thursday, July 24th on AT&T, the phone appears to be shipping right on schedule.
Our own Rob Jackson received his confirmation email from Amazon, showing the phone scheduled to arrive before 8PM Thursday evening. Accompanying the shopping confirmation was an email notifying him that, as promised, his Amazon Prime membership had been extended for another year (a $100 value).
Amazon has also posted a user guide for new Fire Phone owners, although the single page PDF has only 1 quick suggestion at the moment: plug in the phone. We assume additional pages will be added as the phone nears its official release. In the meantime, you, your friends or family members can check out the handy Amazon Fire Phone FAQ on Android Forums for help on getting started with their shiny new investment.
a few of the reviews from major tech site/blogs seem to view the features on this phone as gimmicky.
I wonder if this phone would sell well… Just can’t think of any reason to buy the phone other than 1-year free membership of Prime. $199 with contract is still too much for it.
Nope!
I think everyone needs to look at this from a different perspective, this isn’t your typical Android phone! All reviewers and even all the tech sites, when the Fire Phone was first announced, all said that Amazon’s Appstore is limited against the Google Play Store. Although limited in terms of quantity, what about in terms of quality? There are several apps that do the same core thing as another app! The different calenders and calculators, email clients and VOIP app, etc, etc, all do the samething as the next, maybe one does it better than the other! The Amazon Appstore might have 5 different calender apps as opposed to the 15 found on the Google Play Store…. do you really need 15 difference calender apps as opposed to the 5 available thru Amazon’s store? I think the point that people are missing is that although the Google Play Store now, either matches iTunes Appstore or exceeds it in the number of apps, iTunes still has the higher quality apps and if your favorite and reliable app is found on the Google Play Store then 9 times out of 10 it was out first on iOS! So where does the Amazon Appstore fit in, in all this and why did I bring up iOS and the iTunes Appstore? Well lets go back to the games. Lili, for example, was an extremely popular game that came out when the regular iPhone 5 came out and it has long since been an exclusive to the iOS platform. That game is now available for Android but there’s two catches here. One, you won’t find it on the Google Play Store, two, you also won’t find it just by downloading and installing the Amazon Appstore on any Android device, even if it matches or exceeds the specs, Snapdragon 800, Snapdragon 801, or even the upcoming Snapdragon 805! 2GB ram or 3GB ram, etc, etc. You will only find Lili on the Amazon Appstore via Amazon hardware! Keep in mind Lili was not specifically made for features like dynamic perspective like Tofu and Saber’s Edge are! It’s not made by Amazon’s game studio! It’s been available on iOS since late 2012! There’s plenty of other examples of games that went from iOS to Android BUT ONLY ON Amazon’s hardware, notably, their tablets! Batman, Walking Dead, Wolfs Among Us, etc! By the time the Google Play Store got Telltale Games’ The Walking Dead The Game Season 1, the Amazon Appstore had Season 2, two to three months already! To me games are my favorite type of apps! I game via mobile more than console. The Amazon Appstore WITH Amazon hardware gets most of the iOS exclusives before you even knew they were even available for Android because they aren’t even available on the Google Play Store which is the appstore by the creators of Android themselves, Google, but yet in this aspect they are actually bested! You can’t even crack an Amazon Appstore game MADE for Amazon hardware and sideload it and play it on other Android devices with equivalent hardware as I stated above! What you can do though, is sideload Google Play Store apps and games to Amazon hardware WITHOUT root and 99% of the apps and games work! Amazon as created a version of Android that is still Android but with the quality and reliability of iOS! The reason why Fire OS is closed and is it’s own eco-system is so it won’t be hammered by Android’s number 1 flaw, FRAGMENTATION!!!