# Amazon launches Fire smartphone



## SayWhat? (Jun 7, 2009)

Amazon launches Fire smartphone: Building a device for Prime
ZDNet
9 minutes ago

SEATTLE--Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos launched the Fire smartphone, the company's latest foray to engage Prime customers, sell you more stuff, and recruit developers


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## SayWhat? (Jun 7, 2009)

Product listing page: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00EOE0WKQ?ref%5F=nav%5Fswm%5FFirePhone&pf%5Frd%5Fp=1827762342&pf%5Frd%5Fs=nav-sitewide-msg&pf%5Frd%5Ft=4201&pf%5Frd%5Fi=navbar-4201&pf%5Frd%5Fm=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf%5Frd%5Fr=1ZVYKCTRH779ZG6S2NSP&pldnSite=1

Priced from $199 - $649 depending on phone plan selected.


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## dpeters11 (May 30, 2007)

Cheap phone for $200 since you won't have to pay for Prime for a year, knocks it down by $100.

But, it's mainly a handheld scanner to buy things on Amazon or for their media.


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## phrelin (Jan 18, 2007)

This has been of interest for Amazon Prime folks like us who are contemplating completely restructuring our telephony environment. The first hands-on review that I could find Amazon Fire Phone: hands-on with the ultimate buying machine is encouraging. While it seems pricy at first, the fact that we've been Prime customers for years and most certainly will renew which is worth $99 instantly drops the price (with an AT&T cell service contract) to $100.00 which is reasonable. And since we buy a lot of crap from Amazon, it fits our lifestyle.


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## yosoyellobo (Nov 1, 2006)

phrelin said:


> This has been of interest for Amazon Prime folks like us who are contemplating completely restructuring our telephony environment. The first hands-on review that I could find Amazon Fire Phone: hands-on with the ultimate buying machine is encouraging. While it seems pricy at first, the fact that we've been Prime customers for years and most certainly will renew which is worth $99 instantly drops the price (with an AT&T cell service contract) to $100.00 which is reasonable. And since we buy a lot of crap from Amazon, it fits our lifestyle.


Years ago me and a friend figure that if we could find a way to box and sell crap we could make a fortune. It look like we were ahead of our time.


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## Drucifer (Feb 12, 2009)

The 3D effect looked amazing on the TV news shows.


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## Mark Holtz (Mar 23, 2002)

Hmmm.... this is going to be exclusive to AT&T for now. Why does that sound so iFamiliar?


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## SayWhat? (Jun 7, 2009)

> Amazon is a fascinating company and the Amazon Fire Phone is a fascinating machine for connecting you with stuff to buy. It's probably also the biggest single invasion of your privacy for commercial purposes ever.





> Lest you noticed a common denominator to those items and get the crazy idea that Firefly is only for stuff you can buy at Amazon, it also recognizes songs (oh, you can buy those on Amazon too) and TV shows (ditto) as well as phone numbers, printed information, and QR codes.
> 
> Wait.
> 
> ...


http://venturebeat.com/2014/06/19/amazon-fire-phone-might-be-the-biggest-privacy-invasion-ever-and-no-ones-noticed/


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## phrelin (Jan 18, 2007)

If you haven't read the news today, Amazon dropped the price of the Fire Phone to 99¢. Yes, you still will get the year of Prime and other bonuses, but yes you do have to have a contract with AT&T.

We bought two through Amazon at their initial release. It is a fine smartphone. It makes and receives phone calls, let's me handle email and texts when away from home, takes good pictures and video, links to all our stuff on the Amazon Cloud, plays music and streaming movies and TV shows. It also does other stuff through apps. (Contrary to what you may read, you can load and use many Android apps not sold through the Amazon store.) We like it better than our iPhone 4. Being Amazon customers for over 16 years, we like being in the Amazon environment and were never comfortable with the Apple environment.

Oh, and as noted in this story and others: "Amazon said on Monday that earlier buyers should contact customer service to apply for a refund." We already have received an "adjustment" of the _full purchase amount_ as a credit on our credit card, but still have the two years that was added to our Prime membership.

At this price, it's like Amazon is paying customers $99 for ordering a Fire Phone at the price of 99¢.


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## SayWhat? (Jun 7, 2009)

There used to be an ad for some car repair place where the tag-line was 'you can pay me now, or you can pay me later'.

It isn't the price of the phone, it's the price of the service. Ain't no way I'm committing to $50/mo or more for two years with limited usage allowances. Free Prime sounds good, but you get zinged for data if you download or stream the videos.

And, do you really want to watch much TV on something less than a 3x5 card?


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## SayWhat? (Jun 7, 2009)

Looks like it would be closer to $100/mo for a few Gb, plus a bunch of nickle and dime fees for things like detailed billing and account management.

Nawh. I ain't got much of a brain. More mush than seeds in the ol' shoulder punkin', but even I ain't stupid enough to fall for that kind of scam.


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## dpeters11 (May 30, 2007)

Is it honestly fair to call it a scam? I don't see anything on the product page that suggests Amazon is trying to deceive anyone. If you get it and realize you don't like it, that's a personal opinion, not a scam unless Amazon specifically says it can do something, knowing that it can't.


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## phrelin (Jan 18, 2007)

SayWhat? said:


> Looks like it would be closer to $100/mo for a few Gb, plus a bunch of nickle and dime fees for things like detailed billing and account management.
> 
> Nawh. I ain't got much of a brain. More mush than seeds in the ol' shoulder punkin', but even I ain't stupid enough to fall for that kind of scam.


Uh, I'm not sure where people are getting their $20 per month cell phone service offering them unlimited 4G data, free international long distance, etc. Or are we doing the same old "dissing" without much thought.









In fact, for two Amazon Fire Phones (smartphones) our AT&T bill is $113.68 a month with 1GB of data with a 24-month commitment. Yeah, because we were new AT&T customers there was a one-time $40 "activation fee". But the phones were free and Jeff Bezos (Amazon's CEO) effectively paid us $198 for choosing the Fire Phones by extending our Prime for two years (and giving us some kind of e-coins for apps).

We had a reason for making a change - to save money. For us the Amazon Fire Phone release timing was the trigger on a decision we kept delaying. We eliminated our AT&T land line the cost of which kept climbing and climbing (we all know why), cancelled our Verizon cell service, and eliminated long distance charges. I'm not a fan of AT&T, but I'm not a fan of Verizon either (how we ended up with Verizon had to do with a buyout of another company over a decade ago).

:soapbox:

I'm not going to extensively "dis" Apple, but in another arena I'm on a rant about the new 21st Century "robber barons" of the Silicon Valleys of the U.S. As far as I'm concerned so far Bezos and his Amazon are not among them based on extensive economic analysis, but Apple and Google are the prime examples. And Americans should be aware of the Stop Samsung - No More Deaths! campaign to protect workers. In fact we Americans, including me, regularly need to acknowledge the real human costs of choosing to play with our toys and adjust our behaviors.

:soapbox:


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## SayWhat? (Jun 7, 2009)

phrelin said:


> In fact, for two Amazon Fire Phones (smartphones) our AT&T bill is $113.68 a month with 1GB of data with a 24-month commitment.


Watch a few Prime Videos on those phone and see what your bill is.

1Gb/mo between two phones is nothing.

Now, if Prime Videos didn't count against your data, that might be different.

But, I get all the cell phone service I need for under $10/mo on TracFone. Then of course, I use a phone for a phone and do my web stuff on PCs.

But I burn 20-25Gb/mo on the web that way without streaming any videos. Once I start that, I can see going to 100Gb/mo or more very quickly. At $10.00/Gb overage on AT&T, that could get very pricey.


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## phrelin (Jan 18, 2007)

SayWhat? said:


> Watch a few Prime Videos on those phone and see what your bill is.
> 
> 1Gb/mo between two phones is nothing.
> 
> ...


Like you we do almost all our internet use at home on our computers and last month we used 53GB without streaming any TV or movies. Using phones through 4G for data is pricy but you'll never catch me watching a movie or TV on a phone anyway. The 1 GB more than covers the occasional time I'm away from home and can't connect to wifi but want to access email or stuff on the cloud or my bank. But I do that because I can, not because I need to.

We have had to acquiesce to family insistence on text messaging and "Facebooking-on-the-go" so with great reluctance we have shifted from using simple flip phones to smartphones, the latter being tablet computers with phone apps and nearly useless tiny emulated keyboards.

By the time the Fire Phone was available we were spending $96.40 a month for one smart phone and one flip phone plus a minimum of $26.65 a month for our AT&T land line, plus long distance through a really cheap option. Thus the minimum bill was $122.05 versus our "Fire Phone System" at $113.68 and no long distance charges.


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