Amazon Fire Phone: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

After weeks of clues and allusions, on Wednesday, June 18, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos finally announced the Fire Phone. Amazon has had success in the hardware market, with ebook readers and tablets, but the Fire Phone is the first of their attempt to break into the smartphone world. While the phone won’t be released until July 25, here’s a little about what to expect from the Fire Phone: the good, the bad and the ugly.

The Good
The main parts of the Fire Phone are strong, with quality hardware, a high-quality screen and dual stereo speakers. The phone will work seamlessly with all of Amazon’s products and services, including its website, ebooks, tablets, TV streaming and music streaming. One of the most innovated aspects of the Fire Phone is the dynamic perspective feature, which gives a 3-D-like viewing experience. There’s also a function called Firefly, which can real-time identify 100 million objects. It can recognize faces, songs, products, QR codes and TV shows for one-click buying. Other positive features include the May Day button for tech help and free cloud storage for photos. And speaking of photos, the Fire Phone includes four front-facing cameras.

The Bad
One of the not-so-great aspects of the Fire Phone is that it will run on the Fire OS platform, but is not an actual Android. There’s also no Micro SD card slot, which means heavy users will have to pay $100 for storage. Since its announcement, there have been some privacy concerns regarding Firefly and the data it will be storing.

The Ugly
The ugliest part of the Fire Phone is the price. With contracts, the phones start at $199 for the 32Gb version and goes up to $299 for the 64GB. While that may seem steep, the off-contract pricing starts at a whopping $649 and $749. Which leads the second biggest issue: the Fire Phone is only available through AT&T. Being exclusive to one carrier is highly restrictive to buyers and offers little incentive to switch.

What do you think? Will the Amazon Fire Phone be able to reach the same level as iPhone and Android? Or will consumers think the price is too steep and the features too little?

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