Amazon has been pretty busy lately. First they released their new Fire TV streaming device a few months ago, and now they are announcing this week their new Amazon Fire smartphone. The phone is making a pretty big buzz.
For starters, Amazon is ruling the phone game by offering free photo storage for an unlimited amount of photos on their cloud drive. Anyone who has an iPhone knows the irritation of the “storage almost full” error message. What do you mean I can’t keep 3,000 pictures on my phone?!
Along with the phone Amazon is throwing in a full year membership to Amazon Prime, which includes free streaming of movies and TV shows through Prime Instant Video. Prime also offers access to over a million songs available for unlimited streaming.
The most unique feature of this phone is the introduction of a 3D display on a smartphone. There has been much talk about this feature, and it looks pretty amazing. The photo Amazon chose to showcase the 3D feature was that of the Eiffel Tower. When the phone moves, you get a 3D view of the tower as well. It looks really neat, and is totally unique to the Fire.
The Fire’s camera is also pretty cool, it comes with 13-megapixels and its own button that’s specifically for pictures. You can even take photos when the camera screen is not up; the whole process is said to take about one second.
The display size is only slightly bigger than the current iPhone 5s, which is a little surprising considering the newest smartphone trend has been “the bigger, the better.” Battery life is similar to most smartphones on the market, and comes with a micro USB port. This phone will only be available through AT&T and is set to be released in late July this year.
The Fire will be competing with both Samsung and Apple’s latest phone efforts, and honestly the 3D feature may be the biggest pull. It is in the same price range as both the iPhone 5s and the Samsung Galaxy S5.
Amazon Fire TV sells for $99-The same cost as the Apple TV and the Roku 3. This unit comes with a free month of Amazon Prime, and has the same functionality as other streaming devices on the market today. This release was much less publicized, as it didn’t come with too many new features to make it stand out against its uber popular competition.
So at first glance it looks like Amazon is busy riding the coattails of bigger-named competitors, and cashing in on a tired market that’s already overrun with too many choices. At least they brought something new and fresh to the table with the Fire phone. The smartphone technology bar has been raised yet again, and we can’t wait to see how the competition will respond.
