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| Amazon Fire smartphone |
Amazon’s Fire phone is finally out and the smartphone comes with features like Dynamic Perspective (which will allow 3D viewing in some apps), a FireFly button (to help you shop for anything once you’ve taken its picture) and other Amazon services bundled along with it. To know the top five features, read our earlier piece here. You can also read our detailed specifications review here.
So what are the critics saying about this smartphone? We take a quick look:
According to The Verge’s Dieter Bohn the Dynamic Perspective makes for a cool demo, “but in real use it turns out that when you have a phone in your hands, you happen to have fingers that are right there and ready to be used to do stuff on your phone.”
He notes though that the 3D effects will be interesting for developers and says, “3D gaming on phones was a (well-deserved) bust, but this perspective stuff could be less annoying and inspire new ways of doing things in a game.”
As far as design is concerned, Bohn writes, “The hardware fares a lot better, though to be clear this doesn’t feel as premium and amazing as something like the HTC One. That said, it does feel super solid, if just a tad on the chunky and heavy side. “
Mashable’s Samantha Murphy Kelly gives a sense of how Dynamic Perspective works. She writes, “The ability to tilt the device one way or another to reveal this information works seamlessly and adds to Amazon’s vision of making it easier for users to get what they want without trying as hard…I just tilted the device slightly downward and it started to automatically scroll. When it landed on a paragraph I wanted to read, I held the screen straight up again and it stopped — you can use a finger to stop the scrolling too.”
Engadget’s Chris Velcazo calls Fire the ultimate hardware weapon and notes, “the company’s made something that lets you text mom and use a powerful image-based search system to shop Amazon.com with one touch. It’s the Fire phone, and it feels like the inevitable marriage of Amazon’s device and services initiative.” But he also points out that for Amazon, the success of Fire will depend on how many devices it can sell and given that it’s currently tied to just one carrier, “Amazon’s looking at a limited market.”
He adds, “sure, the Fire phone might be a tempting lure for customers that have already gone all-in on Amazon’s Prime ecosystem. But with so many impressive smartphones currently retailing for that same price, the Fire phone’s likely to go unnoticed by the iPhone crowd Amazon’s chasing after.”
Re/Code’s Ina Fried notes that the Amazon smartphone fails to pose a serious threat to other Android devices and that it didn’t to live up to its potential. She writes, “With the Fire phone, Amazon hasn’t really shaken up the economics of the traditional cell phone business at all. If Amazon believes that the commerce opportunities the device creates will afford it greater pricing flexibility, the company’s not letting on.”
In short while critics are impressed with the Fire phone, but are also pointing out to the obvious: this won’t be enough to woo the iPhone and Android fans.
