14 DAY TRIAL // The heavily rumored Amazon smartphone has finally been pushed into the sunlight for the whole world to contemplate. The handset has been named the Amazon Fire Phone and as was expected, the company has opted for its own Amazon Fire OS instead of Android.
What's quite interesting is that the device actually acts and looks very similar to a Kindle Fire tablet, so Amazon might as well have called the smartphone the Kindle Fire mini.
Although the comparison might be stretched a little bit, since the smartphone arrives with a 4.7-inch IPS LCD 3D display, which doesn't even fit in the phablet category.
But Amazon hasn't replicated the Kindle Fire look and feel in vain. After all, Kindles are the most popular products that the company has ever released and most of its business is based on them.
As we told you in our yesterday’s post, Amazon is currently involved in developing a few new products, including a speech-controlled Bluetooth speaker, a Square-killer credit card reader service, a device that can project a computer image onto any surface and a super thin and light Kindle Paperwhite.
From the list mentioned above, the Kindle product is the most exciting, because let’s face it, Kindles are what Amazon is best known for and this won’t change any time soon.
Anyway, going back to the Fire Phone, this is a 4.7-inch device powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 clocked at 2.2GHz and fitted with 2GB of RAM with either 32GB or 64GB of internal storage to it.
What sets it apart from the crowd are its 3D capabilities and for this purpose, the Fire Phone has four cameras in front and a 13MP main camera on the back.
The device has just been announced, so the first batches of the product are yet to ship out to customers and reviewers for testing. However, sources claiming that they have managed to test the handset exclusively have revealed that they weren't impressed much by the whole 3D experience.
So we’re back to the Kindles being Amazon’s only real sustenance. And as in the case of Kindles, the Fire Phone is designed to work in concert with Amazon’s many services.
So those of you jumping onboard with the tech giant in its new smartphone bandwagon will be able to take advantage of Netflix, HBO, ESPN and Amazon’s own Prime Video services.
There’s a newcomer in the story, in the form of the new service called FireFly, which offers access to Amazon’s database of over 100 million items.
Those familiar with the Kindle Fire experience will easily slide through the Fire Phone menus. There’s the standard grid of icons and the Fire OS content carousel. You’ll be able to pin Apps, Music, Books and other things to the carousel and Amazon’s own slew of apps have the same three-panel design. Not to mention that the company has equipped the handset with the Kindle Fire-characteristic Mayday service.
So if a mini Kindle Fire appeals to your senses, you should know that the Fire Phone is an AT&T exclusive that will ship out for $199 / €146 for a 32GB model (if you sign a 2-year contract with the carrier).