Amazon Fire Phone Review, A Dynamic Perspective
Performance: Battery Life and Camera
The Fire Phone’s 13 megapixel shooter is fairly average. For a midrange phone, it performed as you’d expect. Captures were quick and painless for the most part, but colors needed a bit of post-processing to really shine. The dedicated Camera button is a welcome addition and the inbuilt HDR mode is nice. In fact, we’d recommend leaving it on because it does boost color fidelity and brightness.
Lenticular and Panorama modes are included as well. While loading the camera app itself is near-instant, there's a slight lag after each photo is taken and registered. However, you can hold the shutter down for Burst Mode in order to be sure you don't miss the crucial shot. Interestingly, the Lenticular mode allows users to shoot a burst of photos and then create a stitched GIF right on their phone. That's a feature that isn't highly touted by Amazon, but so far as we're aware, no other phone can claim such a thing. If you're into GIFs, perhaps that's worth a few brownie points.
Have a look at the Fire Phone's unedited image samples below and judge for yourself.
The battery is a 2400mAh, non-removable cell. That’s a little on the small side compared to the larger 5-inch competition, and if you leave Dynamic Perspective on, you’ll probably notice above-average battery drain. You can help that by disabling Dynamic Perspective.
In our testing, which involved hours of e-mail checking, a plethora of social apps set to refresh every 15 minutes, five or six conversations, plenty of messaging and a fair amount of photo taking, we managed to get through a busy 14 hour day, but with just 10 percent remaining at the end of it. We couldn't run our usual AnTuTu battery drain tool due to the inability to access the Play Store, but suffice it to say, all but the heaviest users will be able to squeeze a full day of use from the phone.
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Lenticular and Panorama modes are included as well. While loading the camera app itself is near-instant, there's a slight lag after each photo is taken and registered. However, you can hold the shutter down for Burst Mode in order to be sure you don't miss the crucial shot. Interestingly, the Lenticular mode allows users to shoot a burst of photos and then create a stitched GIF right on their phone. That's a feature that isn't highly touted by Amazon, but so far as we're aware, no other phone can claim such a thing. If you're into GIFs, perhaps that's worth a few brownie points.
;)
Have a look at the Fire Phone's unedited image samples below and judge for yourself.
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Amazon Fire Phone unedited photos; click any to enlarge
The battery is a 2400mAh, non-removable cell. That’s a little on the small side compared to the larger 5-inch competition, and if you leave Dynamic Perspective on, you’ll probably notice above-average battery drain. You can help that by disabling Dynamic Perspective.
;)
In our testing, which involved hours of e-mail checking, a plethora of social apps set to refresh every 15 minutes, five or six conversations, plenty of messaging and a fair amount of photo taking, we managed to get through a busy 14 hour day, but with just 10 percent remaining at the end of it. We couldn't run our usual AnTuTu battery drain tool due to the inability to access the Play Store, but suffice it to say, all but the heaviest users will be able to squeeze a full day of use from the phone.
