Amazon Fire Phone revealed
 

http://www.theverge.com/2014/6/18/58...the-fire-phone

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ryanmac/...phone-seattle/

Thoughts on how successful this will be?

Actually, looks better than I (or anyone for that matter) had expected. they just might have enough differentiators to make it a viable option. Reading all the things it does, and some things better than current offerings - they JUST MIGHT be able to get 1-2% of the market in a few years. That would be the threshold for success.

The Verge's commentary is pretty funny.

(If Amazon's phone exclusively presents stuff from a cubist perspective, I will buy so many of them I can't even)

I stopped reading when I saw it was only going to be on ATT. :td:

OK ScottC, I assume you already have this phone... do tell us how you like it! :)

I am disappointed. Clearly Amazon is not sure it will be able to derive enough additional revenue from the phone to sell it at a more subsidized price. Something that they are arguably doing with the Fire tablets. Throwing Prime in for a year is a gimmick to make the phone seem less expensive.

Google Nexus phones are still my benchmark for good hardware at a reasonable price. Sadly with Android Silver maybe that's going away too. I am now pretty comfortable the Fire smartphone will not devalue my collection of Nexus 4 and Nexus 5 phones (starting a side hobby activity of buying broken Nexus 4 and 5's and fixing them up for resale at a profit). Fire smartphone not having SD card slot or removable battery also helps with this.

The four cameras for 3D perspective is innovative, but doesn't add that much to the cost. I also think the feature is going to be common soon - as in there are other products being developed with this feature, not as someone copying Amazon starting today. I do like the tilting feature showing additional information. Of course, we will need Google apps catch up with this new hardware feature to take full advantage of it. This certainly looks to be an easier phone to use one-handed - valuable feature as I have a baby and a toddler :D

At $649 without contract, I think it costs too much and will likely pass. There is no way I am signing an AT&T contract. I use literally 10 minutes of airtime a month and a fair amount of data (and Google Voice for texts), and feel being forced to pay for unlimited talk/text just to buy data is unfair.

Nope, and not interested in it at all. Very disappointing.

Does TMO still pay ETF?

Thats iPhone range :eek::eek::eek::eek::eek:

My question is, can it run Android apps? If not its kinda pointless and confining.

Agree with the others...rubbish specs for that price. Plus likely only amazon marketplace. All points to a fail for me.

Wasn't AT&T the sole provider for iPhones (in the United States) for the first few years?

I've been pretty happy with AT&T over the years.

The new family plans just cut our bill from $180 to $130.

The Fire looks nice, but I'm set on getting the "waterproof" Galaxy S5 to upgrade my S3.

I already lost an S2 to water damage from jumping in to a pool. The S5 could prevent that kind of problem. :)

Amazon Fire Phone revealed
 

Based on history of Kindle Fire tablet AT&T made sense, disappointed there isn't a special kind of data plan offered as rumored.

should be able to sideload Android apps onto Fire OS, again based on Fire tablet experience.

Water resistance is becoming more common and I hope it becomes commonplace. I see tons of water damaged or cracked display smartphones at the big online auction site.

Yawn.

Finally actual fragmentation of Android in the US (the AOSP-only phones in China already did it, but those haven't made it over here in any numbers worth noticing) ... priced to not move off-contract... perfectly good specs, maybe a bit last-generation but nothing terribly interesting to the hardware except maybe a slightly better camera.

If they priced this to compete with the Nexus 5/Moto X, I'd be a lot more interested. Compared to the S5, iPhone, HTC One or other phones priced comparably, I'd think you'd really need to want Amazon's ecosystem to buy one of these.

Personally, that's a great reason to NOT buy it. :D

The "dynamic perspective" (video of it here) looks very cool, but I'm not sure what the point is other than.. well.. looking cool.

Many of the other features are things that are available as apps anyway.

For those that are already paying for prime it's basically $100 (+tax) which isn't a bad price, but not a lot different to the competition...