Amazon's first smartphone, the Fire Phone, was released about a month ago, after a long run-up of rumors, leaks, and elapsed possible release dates. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos described the new device as putting "everything you love about Amazon in the palm of your hand," and he was telling the truth -- or at least half of it. In reality, the Fire Phone puts everything you love and hate about Amazon right up front.

At first glance, the Amazon Fire Phone looks like a cross between an older iPhone and a generic Android device, and it's clear Amazon tried to incorporate the best of both in its smartphone. The company also tried to unleash some never-before-seen elements into its device, for better and for worse.

Design

As Nondescript as Possible

The Fire Phone sports an understated black body with a glass front and back, just like the shatter-prone iPhone 4 and 5 models. That may make some users worry right off the bat, but the Fire Phone has rubbery non-slip edges and a tapered back that does a good job of keeping the phone securely in your hand at all times. Just don't drop it. (Easier said than done, of course).

It feels a little heavy, but just enough to lend the device a solid, if not super-premium HTC One M8-like feel. It has a 4.7-inch screen that feels perfectly adequate, but not luxurious for Android users used to the now standard 5-inch or larger screen size.

Android users will also immediately notice the lack of capacitive navigation buttons on the bottom bezel, but we'll get more into that later. Speaking of which, the screen is surrounded by pretty substantial top and bottom bezels, which are there to house the four corner sensors that enable the device's 3D effects (more on that later, too). Overall, there's not much to complain about with the physical design of the phone, but nothing to write home about either.

Hardware Specs And Performance

The keyword for the Fire Phone's hardware and performance is: adequate.

The display is only 720p HD, which is far from the top of the line these days, but it's still okay for those who aren't display junkies. However, the mixture of a relatively low-HD resolution and a smaller screen is in curious contradiction to the fact that Amazon's UI makes it easy to browse and play Prime Videos, and unless you have a Miracast-compatible (or Amazon) device with a larger screen, the Fire Phone's screen will feel inadequate for any video use other than a decent distraction while commuting. Another quibble: the Fire Phone's auto-brightness on the IPS display never seemed bright enough, outside or in.

The phone runs on a Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 clocked at 2.2 GHz with 2GB RAM, which is also adequate, if not cutting edge. I didn't find the phone lagging behind in any practical use, but if "serious" mobile gamers weren't turned off by the 720p, they will be by the one-generation-behind chipset. The same goes for shutterbugs, who will find the otherwise adequate 13-megapixel shooter a step back from most premium smartphones.

All other standard hardware packed into the Fire Phone is decent, too: dual band WiFi, 2400 mAh battery (lasts about a day+ under normal use), 32/64GB internal storage (plus Amazon cloud storage means you'll probably never want for space), LTE, Bluetooth, NFC, and other expected features.

Amazon-Specific Features: Hardware and Software

But those aren't the selling points of Amazon's phone. Bezos is banking on some completely new hardware and software features -- like the 3D "Dynamic Perspective," tilt navigation, Firefly real-world object recognition, and Amazon's ecosystem.

Dynamic Perspective

The loudest of the bells and whistles Amazon introduced in the Fire Phone is the long-awaited "3D interface," which Bezos and company calls Dynamic Perspective. The company has been working on this for a long time, and through trial and error, finally decided to put four 120-degree IR-equipped face-tracking cameras in the corners of the screen.

From a technical and R&D standpoint, Dynamic Perspective is very impressive. And technophiles should genuinely applaud Amazon for taking a risk, working hard, and pushing the bar forward on what a parallax effect can mean on a smartphone. In the few locations you can use it on Amazon's Maps app and in the immersive lockscreen, Amazon's Dynamic Perspective is a big leap from Apple's nausea-inducing Parallax introduced in iOS 7.

Unfortunately, in practical use, it's not much more than a gewgaw. For all the talk of Dynamic Perspective enabling tilt-to-scroll, tilt-for-detail, and other tilting UI effects, I never found the feature useful, except to make some (admittedly cool) 3D lockscreen effects. And the tilt "feature," which brings up quick-settings when you tilt the phone diagonally, turned out to be exceptionally annoying -- constantly bringing up the Fire Phone's version of a notifications panel every time I wasn't holding the device on a level plane.

One could see mobile gaming taking advantage of this in the future, but in its current form, it feels like an underutilized kitschy toy.


That "wow" factor in Amazon's promotional teaser is just about as far as it goes.

Fire OS, Gestures, and Left and Right Panels

Though it's technically running on a customized Android OS, the Fire Phone, running Fire OS 3.0, does not feel like an Android device. This is both good and bad.

The Good:

The Fire Phone has two panels that you can swipe from the left or right edge of the screen. The left panel brings up a quick-launcher for the app store, web, videos, photos, etc. when you're not in an app. In-app, it's the settings panel (though even Amazon isn't consistent with this -- the camera's settings swipe from the top). The right panel is less useful, but offers something like Apple's "Today" view on the home screen and basically gives you extras (to varying degrees of usefulness) when you're in-app.

(Photo : Amazon)

Speaking of swiping, even as a long-time Android user, I found myself taking to the Fire Phone's intuitive "up-swipe-to-go-back" gesture very quickly. That, mixed with the left-swipe settings panel, left me not missing the standard Android capacitive bottom buttons at all.

I also liked the idea of Fire OS's home screen carousel, which offers recently-used apps with an expandable and clickable panel of options and details below. Swiping up from the bottom of the home screen brings up all apps, which is also a nice idea.

The Bad:

The preceding paragraph sums up your entire home screen on the Fire Phone. A carousel of recently used apps, the top-used apps on the bottom, and an easy-access all apps drawer -- all against a dull gray/black background. It's incredibly utilitarian, to the point where even power-users who think they have no need for a "pretty" home screen might start to feel nostalgia for at least a customizable background color. There are no extra home screens with custom app placement, no wallpapers, no themes, no widgets... just apps and gray.

(Photo : Screenshot: Robert Schoon)

The other major downside is that Fire OS offers some 200,000 common Android apps, but it doesn't have Google Play services. That means the millions of apps available through Google have to be sideloaded, or you're stuck without them. And to login to any app you would normally use easily through your active Google Play account, you'll have to figure out what that app's password was and manually log in. For a system running on what used to be Android, it's an unnecessary pain, and obviously a ploy to lock users into Amazon's software ecosystem.

Firefly: Where the Real World and Digital World Meet

The other big innovation Amazon packed into the Fire Phone is Firefly, which I think could be accurately termed a "universal real-world input system." Basically, Amazon combined the TV, video, and music-recognition of Shazam with the image-recognition of Google Goggles, plus a universal bar-code scanner, all into one physical button.

In theory, anything you show or play for the Fire Phone will bring up its digital equivalent: record a TV show you're watching, snap an album cover, scan a UPC or QR code, or take a picture of a product, and Firefly will give you whatever details the Internet can offer on that real-world media or object.

In reality, it's still a little buggy and unreliable (though it works really well with TV, video and music that Amazon sells), and it's almost entirely meant to take you to one of Amazon's services and get you to buy something. Firefly -- as a new way to interact with your device and your environment -- is a great innovation, and something I'd hope other smartphone manufacturers will try to replicate. But since it's so tied into Amazon's promotion-and-shopping machine, it actually loses some of its functionality.

Conclusion:

Amazon's Innovations Hampered By Its "BuyPhone"

InformationWeek coined that clever and incredibly accurate moniker for the Fire Phone, which is so tied into the Amazon ecosystem that even the least marketing-conscious user will get frustrated at some point by this smartphone.

Deeply integrating Amazon's promotional and digital offers into a tablet like the Kindle Fire HDX is one thing, but it just doesn't work on a smartphone. Much more than tablets ever will be, smartphones have become many peoples' primary interface with the digital world.

So to restrict everything that flows from the digital world through the Amazon filter makes users feel confined and uncomfortable. Even as I first signed into my Prime account to look at the Maps app, Amazon was offering me a 30-day trial of Audible -- and, by far, that wouldn't be the last time Amazon tried to sell me something on this phone. Scrolling through the carousel, for example, brings up tons of "BUY ME" suggestions in the detail view below for audiobooks, TV shows, Kindle books, what have you.

(Photo : Screenshot: Robert Schoon)

Simply put, I want to be able to use any and all of the apps I like, with ease, and without being constantly marketed to by the core software of my smartphone. In-app ads are fine, marketing is fine, email promotions are fine. But Amazon's Fire Phone is designed primarily to funnel nearly all of your smartphone activities straight to their store, and that's not fine.

That said, Amazon deserves applause for taking a risk with this device and its new features. Whether they're technological blind alleys remains to be seen, but to take a chance on brand-new features like Dynamic Perspective and Firefly takes hard work and guts, and I commend Amazon for seeing it through to launch.

Those features, plus (some) of the new quick-access swipe panels and gestures Amazon brings to its phone are things I hope Google and Apple attempt to adopt and improve upon in their own way.

But the Fire Phone, which isn't exactly being embraced by the public or critics, also provides an instructive negative example to both technology giants (along with Windows and possibly Samsung), because it is the logical conclusion of ecosystem lock and bloatware. Apple, Google: Don't try to lock users too tightly into your particular software/services ecosystem, because they'll get cranky and revolt.

Release Date and Price

We recommend this device for Amazon-philes: Those fanatics who do the majority of their shopping through Amazon and love Prime's special membership extras will love this phone -- but we're talking a select minority of devotees.

It's an AT&T exclusive that was released July 25, 2014, and it comes with a full year of Prime membership (worth $100), plus $10 of Amazon app coins -- and every other Amazon extra the company could think to throw in.

The 32GB version (which, with Amazon Cloud services should be plenty) costs about $200 with an AT&T contract plan. You can buy it at AT&T or -- need we even mention? -- on Amazon.

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