Items tagged with Fire Phone
We thought that Amazon was done with smartphones for good after its disastrous launch of the Fire Phone. The Fire Phone was initially priced at up to $650 off-contract when it launched as an AT&T-exclusive in 2014. Roughly a year later, the failed smartphone was selling for $130 off-contract. According to a new report this morning, Amazon is looking to make a comeback with a new “Ice” smartphone. It is unknown if Ice will be the official retail branding for the smartphone or if it is just the internal codename. However, it does make a nice counterpart to the flaming disaster that was the Fire Phone. Instead of running Amazon’s rather limited FireOS, the new Ice phones are said to run Google's...
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When it comes to smartphones, we can only remember a few recent outright flops that were not only rejected by the tech community, but also general consumers. There was the ill-conceived Microsoft Kin, the HTC First “Facebook Phone” and more recently, the Amazon Fire Phone. In late 2014, Amazon took a $170 million charge on unsold Fire Phone inventory and ended up canning dozens of employees from its Lab126 “skunkworks” division that developed the smartphone.Credit: Flickr - Steve Jurvetson But if you thought that the Fire Phone was an epic fail from Amazon, you haven’t seen anything yet. In an interview with The Washington Post, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos takes pride in his company’s failures (no...
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So long, farewell! Amazon’s Fire Phone launched to a collective “meh” from the tech community and from consumers. Mediocre specs and a high price tag couldn’t be saved by the free year of Prime that Amazon included with every purchase. Over the past year, Amazon has drastically slashed the price of the Fire Phone, from a high of nearly $700 off-contract to a rather bargain basement price of $130 off-contract and unlocked. Even more remarkable is the fact that Amazon still included a year of Prime for free at that low price point, effectively making the smartphone $30. But rather than continue throwing away money on a failed smartphone that nobody seemed to care about or want, Amazon is cutting...
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There’s no question that the Fire Phone has been a spectacular flop for online retail giant Amazon. While the company has found success with its Kindle e-Readers and Kindle Fire tablets, Amazon found that breaking into the cutthroat smartphone market takes more than a strong brand name and some decent hardware specs. When the Fire Phone launched last year, it cost $199 (32GB) with a new two-year contract from AT&T (the exclusive carrier for the Fire Phone; another big mistake). Pricing off-contract climbed to as much as $650 off-contract for the 64GB Fire Phone, which was a lot to ask in the face of competition from the Samsung Galaxy S5 and Apple iPhone 5 -- its contemporaries at the...
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If one man's trash is another man's garbage, does the same hold true for online retailers? If so, then Amazon's flop -- heretofore known as the Fire Phone -- can be your treasure for £99 (around $156 in U.S. currency), provided you live in the UK and aren't real picky about smartphones. The Fire Phone is marked down from £299 (~$471), a laughable price for a handset that even Amazon admitted was too high. Back in November of last year, Amazon Senior Vice President of Devices David Limp went on record saying, "We didn't get the price right. I think people come to expect a great value, and we sort of mismatched expectations. We thought we had it right. But we're also willing to say, 'we missed'....
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The Fire Phone has been a disaster for Amazon, with initial reviews panning its gimmicky 3D interface and its high price of entry compared to more established players in the smartphone market. In addition, the fact that the smartphone runs a forked version of Android means that Google apps that many of us take for granted like Gmail, Maps, and YouTube aren’t even available to use. Amazon already has plans in place to get its Research and Development division back on track for future hardware launches, but in the mean time, the company is advertising a pretty hot deal on the Fire Phone. Amazon is now offering the 32GB version of the phone, unlocked, for just $189. And we also have to consider...
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Amazon had high hopes for its Fire Phone; especially after the success it's seen with its Kindle and Kindle Fire tablet releases. Unfortunately for Amazon, it's not as easy to compete in the mobile phone space, and to compound the problem, Amazon now admits that it priced its Fire Phone all wrong at launch. This was a pretty big flop for Amazon, and probably not by coincidence, it's now being reported that Amazon is reorganizing operations at Lab126, its R&D group based in Silicon Valley. News of the reshuffle comes from Fast Company, which cites multiple unnamed sources that are supposedly familiar with Amazon's efforts. Those sources say that the changes have been...
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It goes without saying that Amazon's Fire Phone leaves a bit to be desired (check out our review for more on that). Ultimately, it's been a major flop for the company, something its sales figures back up, which is really quite unfortunate given that it was the company's first phone - and a promising one, at that. Given all that, it might not strike too many people as interesting that the device just received a huge update, but I am willing to bet that those who actually own the phone might be a little intrigued. With this update, which comes in at an unknown size, Amazon has added a bunch of standard features that probably should have shipped with the device to begin...
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So, how's that Fire Phone working out for you? Oh, you don't own one? Welcome to club. If you're like the vast majority of smartphone owners, you're carrying a handset made from Samsung, Apple, or even HTC. But the Fire Phone? It was supposed to be Amazon's next big thing, like the Kindle, only it wasn't. And if you ask Amazon what went wrong, the company will tell you it priced the Fire Phone all wrong. "We didn't get the price right," Amazon Senior Vice President of Devices David Limp to Fortune in an interview. "I think people come to expect a great value, and we sort of mismatched expectations. We though we had it right. But we're also willing to say, 'we missed.' And so we corrected." Limp...
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Bold. That’s the word that comes to mind when we consider Amazon’s Fire Phone. In a world where precious little has happened in the smartphone space over the past few years, at least in terms of groundbreaking innovation, Amazon’s entrance provides all the spark you need to sit up and pay attention. So what’s Amazon, predominantly an online e-tailer, doing jumping into this Lion's den of a market space? The Fire Phone is the company’s first foray into the cutthroat world of handsets, but it’s far from its first rodeo in mobile hardware. The company has seen terrific success in the e-reader world with its famed Kindle line, and it has even garnered mainstream...
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Bold. That’s the word that comes to mind when we consider Amazon’s Fire Phone. In a world where precious little has happened in the smartphone space over the past few years, at least in terms of groundbreaking innovation, Amazon’s entrance provides all the spark you need to sit up and pay attention. These days, a major OEM doesn’t just enter the smartphone space. Apple and Samsung have dominated market share and profits for years, squeezing BlackBerry out almost entirely and putting HTC on life support. Nokia, meanwhile, is stutter-stepping as Microsoft begins a massive series of layoffs that’ll no doubt impact the future of Lumia going forward. So what’s Amazon,...
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Amazon turned the tablet market upside down with its low cost Kindle Fire family, and now it will try to do the same thing in the smartphone sector with its recently launched Fire Phone. While that plays out, the Fire Phone has already received the teardown treatment, and lucky for Amazon, passing the test with flying colors isn't a prerequisite for big sales figures. Straight to the point, the Fire Phone isn't a handset you'll have fun trying to repair on your own if something goes wrong. The folks at iFixIt found this out by doing what they always do -- busting out their tools and disassembling the device at all costs. Things started out on a positive note thanks to the use of non-proprietary...
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Outspoken T-Mobile Chief Uses "Rated R Vocabulary" To Discuss Amazon Fire Phone And AT&T Exclusivity
T-Mobile considers itself the "Un-carrier" in the wireless industry, part of which entails shooting it straight. That's something T-Mobile chief John Legere has no problem doing, and though sometimes his words could benefit from a filter, he gets his point across. With that in mind, you can bet he had some things to say about Amazon's newly introduced Fire Phone and the exclusivity agreement the company struck with AT&T. In an interview with CNET, Legere was asked if he was afraid of burning any bridges by speaking his mind, particularly when he called Amazon's unveiling a "boring show." His response? "Fudge them!," only he didn't say "Fudge." To borrow from A Christmas Story, Legere said...
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