Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Amazon Fire Phone: Explained!”.
Hey what is up guys mkbhd here and yesterday, amazon released their fire phone and basically every major tech publication wrote something about it. It’S at sort of an all-time high in terms of curiosity right now – and i didn’t expect to see so many people interested in it. But i’ve gotten a lot of questions about it, so the fire phone is a new smartphone with a custom os from amazon fire os. It’S built on top of android, and it’s based around a couple of pretty unique features. The number one of these being, what’s called dynamic perspective, in fact, they just sent out an email to a lot of people who are interested today, saying that this is the first smartphone with dynamic perspective, it’s kind of like 3d, but not really so. The phone has four front-facing cameras, one on each corner to track your face, and it uses a tracking with an accelerometer and gyroscope to shift. What’S on the screen a bit to make it feel more immersive. It works with their new custom user interface. It works with a few apps here and there when you tilt, works with a few games here and there you can use it to scroll down lists and pages without touching the display yeah.
This is neat. This is really neat when i turn it, it moves whoa. The verge actually did a great hands-on video with the phone and i’ll have that linked right below the like button. If you want to check this out in action to a lot of people, this will either scream awesome or gimmick, depending on who you are, but either way look at it.
This is the main headlining feature of this phone. The second major feature is, what’s called firefly and it has its own button on the side of the phone when you press it, it opens up firefly and just starts scanning with the camera and the microphones and whatever you point the phone at it will recognize it. So if you have a tv playing a show in the background or if you have music playing in the background or if you point it at an object, it will scan that and recognize it and then bring up a link to buy it on amazon. Of course, amazon is hoping you’ll really like this feature and start taking major advantage of it and buying lots of things on amazon. Based on what you recognize around you pretty self-explanatory. This is supposed to make amazon more money, but besides those two major new headlining features, there’s just a couple of other things: sprinkled in you have your mayday live tech support. So the same thing that was on the kindle fire tablets. You now get that live, quick tech support on the phone uh and since it’s the fire os made specifically for this phone, you have a couple of other features like a notification tray.
A live weather updates some gesture stuff to get to quick settings. It’S made to compete and it’s got these new features uh to stay with that. You also get a free year of amazon, prime, but here’s the thing about the fire phone: it costs 650 off contract, and that brings up a lot of questions about what exactly you’re paying for here and, to be honest, basically, all of this phone’s features, except for Dynamic perspective – and i guess mayday could be packaged into an app one, app a five or ten dollar amazon fire app. That could look at what the camera is looking at and interpret it and give you an amazon like to buy it.
We actually already kind of had versions of that you’ve, probably already heard of shazam and sound hound, where you can just listen to whatever music is playing it’ll, give you a link to buy that song on itunes or amazon or whatever, and then at one point we Had what’s called google goggles, which you’ve probably already heard, of which let you just point your phone at anything? It would recognize it and then give you a google shopping link to buy whatever you were getting. It didn’t always work, it wasn’t perfect, but it did basically the same thing and at one point, google now even had that command built into it. So amazon could have built a amazon, fire or firefly app and just packaged that and sold it on android and ios stores and called it a day, but because they decided to make a phone out of this and not just an app now they have to make All these things for the phone they have to make the custom fire os for the phone-sized screen. Now they have to make all these custom apps because they don’t have access to the google play, store or the ios app store and for third-party apps they’re still going to depend on amazon’s app store. Because again, they can’t use the google play, store or the ios app store and they have to do manufacturing and production and packaging and amazon’s never made a phone before so this is their first try at all of that. I’M not doubting them, i’m not saying they can’t do it, but this is a lot of work to do for these features.
You want to sell people and they also have to work with a carrier to sell this phone and they only worked with att. So it’s exclusive to att at this point and it’s 650 off contract, so they made a 650 phone instead of an app or two i mean i guess on one hand, that’s that’s kind of ballsy and confident about what they have to offer, but on the other Hand that seems pretty silly, not everyone has to make a phone remember. When facebook decided we have to make a phone and the htc first was born.
How long did that last really so i’d be surprised if we saw this amazon fire phone last as long as that, i mean i’d, be i’d be surprised if we saw a version two of it next year, even for 200 bucks amazon’s kindle fire tablet makes more Sense because you actually get a unique new form factor specifically for reading. You know it actually has some advantages over other e-readers in the 200 price bracket. I just don’t see any of that with the 650 price bracket and the fire phone, even if it’s 200 on contract with a t.
There are better options out there. So sorry, amazon probably should have made an app. So i wasn’t able to get my hands on one of these phones early, i’m not that cool i didn’t get to get hands-on, but my first shot at actually playing with this phone would be pre-ordering one which would mean paying the 650 with the pre-order. I have that link below and then waiting a month for it to actually come out.
Uh now, don’t get me wrong. I love amazon, like i spend lots of money on amazon, probably more than any other site on the internet. I’M an amazon prime member. Most of the people i know are amazon. Prime members. We all get our textbooks from amazon, but i won’t be buying this phone, and neither should you so that’s the amazon fire phone explained feel free to share this video get the word out. I’Ve gotten a lot of questions about this phone, so this is the video for people who are asking questions. So if you know people who are curious share this video with them, that’s been it thanks for watching and i’ll talk to you guys in the next one peace .