The Fire Phone has been out for four days now and I finally went and messed with one in person, mostly because the AT&T store is next to the sandwich place I go to on Tuesdays and I had twenty minutes to kill. Short version: I'm not buying it, and I don't think you should either, but I get why Amazon tried.
For anyone who hasn't been paying attention, this is Amazon's first actual phone, $199.99 with a new two-year AT&T contract or $649 if you want it unlocked, and it is an AT&T exclusive, which already annoys me because I'm on Verizon and have no interest in switching carriers to try out a gimmick. The headline feature is something Amazon calls Dynamic Perspective. There are four little infrared cameras in the corners of the screen that track your face and tilt the interface as you move your head, so icons feel like they have depth and app menus slide open sideways when you tilt the phone. The demo unit did this thing where a lock screen background looked like it had layers, clouds moving behind mountains, and it is a genuinely neat trick for about ninety seconds. Then a guy in line behind me wanted a turn and I realized I had spent ninety seconds tilting a phone back and forth like an idiot in the middle of a mall.
The other big feature is Firefly, which is a button on the side you hold down and it identifies stuff around you, book covers, movie posters, songs playing over the store speakers, and then, this is the part that matters, it takes you straight to buying that thing on Amazon. That's the whole business model in one button. It's not really a camera feature, it's a checkout shortcut wearing a camera feature's clothes. I pointed it at a box of cereal on a shelf near the register just to see what would happen and yeah, it pulled up the Amazon listing in about two seconds. Fast. Also a little unsettling how fast.
Here's my actual complaint, and it's not really about the hardware, which felt fine, solid, glass back, nothing wrong with it as an object. My complaint is the pricing structure basically punishes you for not wanting a contract. $649 for a phone with a Snapdragon 800 chip that came out over a year ago in other flagships feels off in July of 2014 when the Galaxy S5 and the iPhone 5s are both cheaper and have bigger app ecosystems that aren't tied to one retailer's shopping cart. And there's no expandable storage past what you buy up front, though to be fair Amazon is throwing in free unlimited photo storage on Cloud Drive, which is genuinely nice if you're already deep in Prime.
I also want to mention Mayday, which isn't new to the phone, it's the same feature from the Kindle Fire tablets, the button that gets you a live video tech support person in under fifteen seconds. I've used it on my Kindle before when I couldn't figure out how to get a library book to sync and it actually is impressive, the rep could see my screen and draw on it to show me where to tap. That part of the phone I'd defend. It's just not enough of a reason to buy a whole device around.
Early reviews this week have mostly landed where I did, interesting party trick, not a reason to switch phones, and I think Amazon knows that already given how hard they're pushing Firefly and Mayday over the actual phone specs in the ads I keep seeing. My honest guess, and I'll probably eat these words in a year, is this ends up being remembered less as a phone and more as an extremely expensive shopping cart button. Which, fine, if that's genuinely the play, own it, but don't charge iPhone prices for it while doing it.
Anyway. Sandwich was good. Phone, less so.