Well at least that preview video makes sense now with the dynamic perspective. Curious how functional that really is. I cannot think of an immediate use of why I would want that on a communication/media device but would love to be wrong.
The question is very important because it's claiming Android app compatibility. What API level it's running is therefore critical information to any developer.
Fire OS tends to be more a "skin" than a fork anyway, it's similar to TouchWiz or Sense. The core framework, services, and runtime are all Android.
Well, yes and no. My understanding from talking to the Trello Android team is that Fire OS has a lot of subtle differences in its APIs from the official Google ones, especially around things like mapping and push notifications that otherwise rely on Google services. Sometimes that sounded like it was trivial to work around, and sometimes not, but the overall discussion reminded me more of porting between Windows 3.1 and NT than anything else.
Mapping and push notifications are both Google Play Services APIs, not Android APIs. So it's not that Amazon forked the APIs as much as the app that implemented those not-platform APIs isn't installed.
The problem is that it's the only differentiator. For many users, their favorite apps aren't available on Amazon's appstore. Being so late means getting user traction will be hard without some amazing features. I don't see that from Amazon.
At this point, the head tracking is a gimmick. It's not something people chose or switch ecosystems for. Might attract truly new smartphone users, but isn't a "killer feature". Apple already uses 6D accelerometer applicable to much of what the Fire's head tracker will be used for.
While looking at the product page, I thought: "So, I'm tied to Amazon and AT&T, and I'm paying for the privilege. How is this any better than my cheaper Nexus 5?"
Also, isn't this going to be decimated by Google X's Project Tango?
So, they're going to use everyone's mobile phone to 3D map the entire world? Privacy advocates are going to scream, but roboticists are going to rejoice.
The 'superior app store' note applies equally to proper Android (the non-Amazon version) users as well. Amazon App Store users can't even download Google Chrome or Firefox, let alone the hundreds of thousands of other apps and games that are available to non-Amazon folks.
X-ray is really cool. Imagine if you were watching a video on your iPad and decided you wanted to see more information about one of the actors on screen. With X-Ray you can click on their face and it'll automatically bring up their IMDB info. This is a really cool integration that is lacking in competing devices.
I'm not saying things like that make up for the inferior app store, just that it's really cool.
As someone who spent a couple of weeks with a Kindle Fire tablet, I want to mention that the Amazon ecosystem is frustratingly closed. There are many apps that I use and prefer on my nexus phone that I just can't get in the Amazon appstore, and ultimately that's enough to keep me away.
Or the texting capabilities are in fact sub-par. Both Apple and Google have had to double down on messaging UX/functionality because they are used so much, plus Facebook, Whatsapp, and Snapchat.
Most of the features are really new. However, they are one little step ahead, well designed and fit into a nice looking ecosystem. I like it. I really do.
One thing I find annoying with my sony z1 compared to an iphone 5 is how the camera just dies half of the time whenever I try to take a picture from a locked phone. In iOS it's never a problem. Lets hope amazon doesn't screw it up with their phone. Another annoying thing is how it refocuses between each photo, decreasing burst speed.
I'll definitely be interested to see what compelling applications people find for Dynamic Perspective. Currently most of the applications that they previewed look like they aren't very far off from what could be accomplished with accelerometer data. It's mostly people tilting the device and seeing a different perspective which isn't too hard to simulate with an accelerometer... Still excited to see a new player in the space that will hopefully help push innovation.
Dynamic Perspective thing... The shake to undo is possibly the most hated interaction on iPhones. I don't know if I would want to have to do physical stuff to the phone itself to reveal information that should be accessible via touch (or visible at all times).
So hang on....are you telling me that $199 is the cheapest price WITH A CONTRACT??
Obviously things are different in the US,but in UK it's almost unfathomable to be paying anything for the phone if you are getting a contract. Sometimes the latest iphone will have an upfront cost of 29 pounds, but it's rare.
It is worth mentioning that they are including a year of prime which is worth $99 and a $10 credit on their store so the actual price compared to say an iPhone is $90.
My experience of EE this week was that they attempted to sting me with a £150 up front charge for a phone (HTC One m8) on a £35pm contract. So, this does happen.
That's normal in the US. The difference here is that there is no specific price point you have to get on - I've been moving up and down with how much I pay each month on my contract, which I couldn't do in Australia. The contract termination fees are also much lower, and if you're on family plans the month to month costs can go down drastically.
> in UK it's almost unfathomable to be paying anything for the phone if you are getting a contract. Sometimes the latest iphone will have an upfront cost of 29 pounds, but it's rare.
My observation is that the telcos will often offer the more expensive phones on higher tariffs, and that it's cheaper over 12/24 months to buy a phone off-contract, and then get the cheapest SIM-only plan for your needs.
The Amazon Phone seems to capitalize on content consumption of text, audio, video, and the abstract (through purchases). In my mind, this is what the smart phone should be all about.
For music, I agree. But there is other content - TV shows, Movies, books, etc. My iTunes purchased video aren't going to play on an Amazon Fire unless I remove all the DRM from it.
I am always a little skeptical about gestures that involve physically moving or tilting or swivelling the phone.
Maybe it works well for others but I find it getting very much in the way when I use my phone in bed, or lying around on the couch, or walking even.
On my iPhone 5, I have the screen rotation locked for about 99% of the time.
That seems like the only way to prevent it from being some kind of torture chamber. Although it still could be, hopefully you can turn it off if necessary.
I think the subtle tilt-to-scroll paradigm, if it works well, could become widely adopted. It seems to make one-handed scrolling much more approachable without any fingers obscuring content.
Question: Does it seem like it requires the camera system to make it usable or could it be done reliably with just the accelerometers now common in smart phones?
"Great phone for reading?" If they really cared about the reading experience, they would have put an AMOLED screen on it. AMOLED screens are far superior for night-time reading, which is when most people do their reading.
Agree - he said they were "lavish" in their attention to make it a good phone for reading and I'm like how much can you actually do? It's a 4.7 inch 720p LCD, there's your reading experience. Reading on a phone plain sucks for anything more than a couple articles. Autoscroll doesn't float my boat either.
From my post in another thread: It's $199 with a 2 year contract with AT&T, meaning it's a $649 phone (now confirmed). It's priced with other 'premium' phones like the iPhone 5S and the Galaxy S5 (both $199 with a 2 year contract, $649 off contract at AT&T). Unfortunately, Amazon's other products like the Kindle Fire are anything but premium hardware and software-wise. On the software side this is partially due to the Amazon-first mentality for all media and partially due to the extremely clunky Amazon UI and app store. Then again, I wouldn't consider Samsung a 'premium' phone software-wise either due to my poor experience with the Galaxy S4's clunky setup after coming form 'pure' Android. It's still far better than the Kindle Fire, though.
I had typed this up before they announced the off-contract pricing in another thread and was quoting it here. The off-contract price was an assumption at that point.
How is this remotely competitive in a world full of $179 Moto G's? $219 Moto G LTE's? Or even a $350 Nexus?
This seems like a phone from two or three years ago where $650 for a non-premium brand would have been passable. I just bought a Moto G LTE for my wife and its a wonderful phone. I don't see what Amazon would bring to the table for an extra $420. That's almost 10 months of service right there.
I don't think it is. Except for people who buy on-contract and don't know better about the pricing and features compared to other phones. Heck, you're even stuck with Amazon's Silk browser... there's no Firefox or Chrome in the Amazon App Store... so most users can forget about syncing this with anything.
I bet if you went and talked to people if they were comfortable with all of their online banking being routed through Amazon...I suspect most would say No. Just a guess.
If you put it in terms they understand, they care.
2) Silk is the only one I know of that a mere coding error could cause this. It isn't like Chrome and Firefox have a fleet of machines and code designed to act as an always-on proxy.
You can certainly side load applications so Firefox is not a problem and if you know what you're doing Chrome isn't either. Definitely less than ideal though.
You can, but you have to enable side-loading (most people who buy this phone won't even know what that means) and then you need to worry about it getting out of date. That's a big deal for browsers and not having the app store automatically update you (as it will on Android) to the latest version is a big security risk.
Different markets. The Moto G (and Moto E, cheaper at $130) have much lower specs, and there are phones that have the same specs as a Moto G or Moto E for half the price (like the AT&T Radiant) because they don't carry the "Moto" brand.
The Moto E and the ZTE Radiant do not have identical specs. But the Radiant is half the cost at almost the same specs. It's clearly a better value. If you can't stand not having the latest Android you can install many custom ROMs, or just wait a year or two for another dirt-cheap phone with a newer version and buy that.
AT&T made significant changes to their plans earlier this year, so buying a 2-year contract from them is now a terrible idea. You're much better using their installment plan or just paying full price for the phone.
With a 10GB plan you end up paying $800 for the phone ($199 up-front, and $25mo extra) under the 2 year commitment plan. Definitely a better deal to just pay $650 up-front.
I agree with you in regard to the software on the Kindle fire, but I actually felt the hardware wasn't so bad. Anandtech did a review of the screen and found it to be the best screen (if not, close to the best screen) on any android tablet, including the updated nexus 7. Are there specific aspects that make the hardware less premium?
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Fire OS tends to be more a "skin" than a fork anyway, it's similar to TouchWiz or Sense. The core framework, services, and runtime are all Android.
https://developer.amazon.com/public/solutions/devices/fire-p...
Also, isn't this going to be decimated by Google X's Project Tango?
https://www.google.com/atap/projecttango/
Sometimes, I wonder if Google is going to collectively vanish out of our universe once it has collected every piece of data that it can from this one.
But I have a superior app store.
The only big feature I think could prove important is their live-chat help.
I'm not saying things like that make up for the inferior app store, just that it's really cool.
Messaging is really important.
I don't care if they can see I'm ugly. I know that already as does everyone else.
Obviously things are different in the US,but in UK it's almost unfathomable to be paying anything for the phone if you are getting a contract. Sometimes the latest iphone will have an upfront cost of 29 pounds, but it's rare.
My observation is that the telcos will often offer the more expensive phones on higher tariffs, and that it's cheaper over 12/24 months to buy a phone off-contract, and then get the cheapest SIM-only plan for your needs.
Here's EE's page for a 16GB iPhone 5s. Prices range from 9.99 to 149.99 depending on the plan chosen:
http://shop.ee.co.uk/mobile-phones/pay-monthly/iphone-5s-16g...
Look at the next model up, 32GB, and the up-front cost increases significantly:
http://shop.ee.co.uk/mobile-phones/pay-monthly/iphone-5s-32g...
Here you can buy the 16GB iPhone 5S for £0 up front, on a £33pm contract.
http://www.dialaphone.co.uk/plans?upfrontPriceRange=Free&tar...
I'd much rather phones (and computational/communication devices in general) focus on content creation.
no hairy workarounds to replace an iphone in your mac ecosystem, which is something google has not achieved.
(yes, other than apps, but that will follow)
This phone is a joke.
Maybe it works well for others but I find it getting very much in the way when I use my phone in bed, or lying around on the couch, or walking even. On my iPhone 5, I have the screen rotation locked for about 99% of the time.
I can't imagine it's small, so they must be not "always-on", which means there is some tradeoff here.
Question: Does it seem like it requires the camera system to make it usable or could it be done reliably with just the accelerometers now common in smart phones?
More people need to copy the old HP stuff where you used the bezel for navigation and commands.
This seems like a phone from two or three years ago where $650 for a non-premium brand would have been passable. I just bought a Moto G LTE for my wife and its a wonderful phone. I don't see what Amazon would bring to the table for an extra $420. That's almost 10 months of service right there.
http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2011/09/28/amazon-kindle-fir...
I can tell you from experience 0 of the ones I've encountered outside the IT/Startup space were aware of that is what it does.
Probably around the same number who care that their traffic is going through Amazon first.
If you put it in terms they understand, they care.
https://www.eff.org/2011/october/amazon-fire%E2%80%99s-new-b...
Also, Amazon has most of its customers banking information already.
And if they pushed an update to change this [even accidentally], how would you know?
How would you know if any browser pushed an update [even accidentally], with this side effect?
2) Silk is the only one I know of that a mere coding error could cause this. It isn't like Chrome and Firefox have a fleet of machines and code designed to act as an always-on proxy.
Not many, but more than would understand or care about the "man in the middle attack browser" argument.
Radiant: 480 x 800 G: 720 x 1280
Radiant has a much smaller battery.
G has quad core, radiant has dual.
G has 8gb of storage. Radiant has 2 available to user.
Moto G comes in an LTE flavor for $30 more, no option with Radiant.
Radiant is also forever stuck on 4.1 while the G continues to get updates and will probably get some for some time.
Moto E: Dual-core 1.2 GHz, 4.3 inches, 540x960, Internal 4GB, 1GB RAM, MicroSD, 5MP Camera, 854x480 Video, HSDPA, Li-Ion 1980 mAh, Android 4.4
Price: $130 @ Amazon
ZTE Radiant: Dual-core 1.4 GHz, 4.0 inches, 480x800, Internal 2GB, 1GB RAM, MicroSD, 5MP Camera, 1280x720 Video, HSDPA, Li-Ion 1735 mAh, Android 4.1
Price: $75 @ Amazon
The Moto E and the ZTE Radiant do not have identical specs. But the Radiant is half the cost at almost the same specs. It's clearly a better value. If you can't stand not having the latest Android you can install many custom ROMs, or just wait a year or two for another dirt-cheap phone with a newer version and buy that.
Scroll down to family plans. Now a new line just costs $15 if its a phone not on a contract. Else its $40
http://www.att.com/media/att/2014/support/images/MSV_Image_3...
With a 10GB plan you end up paying $800 for the phone ($199 up-front, and $25mo extra) under the 2 year commitment plan. Definitely a better deal to just pay $650 up-front.
In any case, I'm with Aio Wireless, now Cricket Wireless -- same network, but much better deal, plus unlimited everything.