What's MISSING on Amazon Fire Phone... and why it WON'T set the world alight

Hmmm

This will be the Palm Pre all over again.

O2 put the Pre as a premium phone at a similar price point to the iPhone. (3GS I think). Was anyone surprise that people bought the better known and supported iPhone rather than the Pre?

It does not matter how good the phone is O2 and Apple will heavily promote iPhone, People have Apple apps bought, and while Amazon may have deep pockets, the fact this is an O2 exclusive it will probably see it smoulder on for a while then burn out.

No Guardian App!

So you admit to being a Guardian reader!

Just say it as it is, the phone is crap value, stop being wishy washy.

Re: Amazon should lower the price

Agreed, this is the approach everyone (including El Reg for a while) thought that MS was going to take with the Surface. They didn't, they priced it to compete with the iPad and then had to take a write-down of $1 billion on it. I've got a Kindle Fire (mother bought one thinking it was a Kindle e-reader, so I got her a paperwhite and took the Fire on) and rooted it and it's an "ok" tablet, seriously lacking in features (no GPS, no bluetooth, no expansion, crap on-board storage but with an ok screen and reasonable speed as long as you don't have an app or 2 running in the background) but the Amazon app store is pretty awful, I crowbarred the Play store on there but it's very hit-and miss as to what apps think they're compatible, side-loading is also seems quite hit-and-miss. Unfortunately this review seems to confirm that that the Fire-phone is much like the Fire tablet - overpriced and not containing enough value even to those who've invested heavily in Amazon wares.

Re: Amazon should lower the price

Now available in the US for $199, unlocked, including a year of Amazon Prime. If you're a big Amazon user that could be a good deal, since the year of Prime would be quite valuable.

Doesn't do anything for me,¹ but I know a number of Amazon Prime customers who could do much worse than buy the unlocked Fire for a couple hundred dollars. In effect they're getting a decent² subsidized phone without a contract.

¹I don't buy enough on Amazon for the free 2-day Prime shipping to be worthwhile - and if I really need something delivered quickly, I have my wife buy it with her Prime account. I'm not interested in streaming video or audio so no Prime benefit there. And I wouldn't buy the Fire anyway because it doesn't have a physical keyboard, removable battery, or SD card slot.

²I know, not by gadget-freak standards. Plenty good enough for most people.

> Why would I want to pay through the nose to be effectively locked into the Amazon ecosystem?

That's a really good point, but Apple seem to have been able to achieve it and if anyone should be able to, it should be Jeff?

Maybe the iPod>>iPhone migration path is just more compelling than the Kindle>>Fire Phone. Certainly the kindle seems less like a natural feed to a phone than the iPod classic does, but not massively so.

The thing that puts me off is Firefly - very clever for sure, but the idea of paying Bezos top money to allow me to buy more from him more easly just grates.

Additionally, I can't find fault with the Kindle.

Sure there are other ereaders out there, but if I ignored price, I'd still go with Kindle (love the worldwide 3G). Price of it's just the icing on the cake.

On my regular android phone I have my amazon app, my kindle app (and I assume there's nothing to stop there being a Firefly app in the future).

I am just completely bemused as to why Amazon even attempted to make this phone. There's absolutely nothing unique about this I want, and mediocre specs and insane price..

Re: A free speaker worth £199

And what about the journalists' bribe?

Is there a tech journalist that DIDN'T have Amazon Prime membership yet (except for possible refuseniks that will get very annoyed at the bribe)?

Re: A free speaker worth £199

also worth noting that you only get the speaker on 8GB or 20GB a month contracts, also, (perhaps tellingly) the speaker itself is not listed in the Kitsound area of the Accessories corner of the site, me thinks they have a few out back that need getting rid of (maybe that had been purchased and returned?)

Re: A free speaker worth £199

What use is it though? I'm after a MOBILE phone so give me a speak? What the f..

Might as well have given me 4 pints of semi skimmed milk, I can use that whilst attempting to use the phone too.

Re: Baffling

It would make sense for Amazon to make a really good phone and heavily subsidise it due to it being locked into their ecosystem.

Instead they have done the lock up part, but not released a good phone.

Re: Apps stores.

Reaching there, to take a jab at a completely unrelated device, aren't you?

C'mon, show us on this doll, where the nasty Microsoft touched you!

Re: Apps stores.

Actually they do mention the lack of apps on WP here. And WP has the Guardian, Dropbox, at least my banks' apps, Uber and Foursquare. So when you say its app selection is better than Windows Phone's, what you mean is, it's way worse, particularly when looking at the list the reviewer mentioned.

Or what you really mean is The Register doesn't automatically parrot 2010's news that WP Store has no apps, the way most sites you read do.

Re: Briefly considered one

Eeewwww the s3 mini.....I have the misfortune of having one for work. Is your like everyone else's with a cracked screen when it slid out of your hand?

Re: How much? Still?

Agree, but come on, spill the beans, which phone and network ?

(Consider it an act of educating the people spending too much, if you like, but I'm just curios as to whether my predictions are correct. Probably a Moto G on Three AYCE. Some might have thought of Giff Gaff, but don't they piggy-back on O2...)

Re: Didn't I read on here....

Currently it's "free" on a stupidly expensive phone contract - $87 a month(!) for 12 months or $80 a month for 24 months for a pathetic 2GB data plan. Two things to conclude from this are 1) Americans are *really* getting screwed by their phone providers and 2) having to dropping a grand to get the free thing isn't free.

Without contract it's $199 which IMO is somewhat more palatable but in a market filled with cheaper, similar spec phones hardly a bargain.

Re: $50 and a month of Prime

I'd assume this is pretty standard for all companies giving devices which depend heavily on paid content to reviewers. Are they expected to spend their own money buying content to test the device. The Fire Phone (and iphone), but particularly the Fire phone, is all about purchasing apps, books, music and watching subscription videos from Amazon, how can you really review them without doing those things?