With the Kindle holding its own in a very crowded tablet market, Amazon once again stepped out on a limb to try and prove that it’s not afraid to compete with the big boys, such as, Roku, Google Chromecast, and Apple TV, when it announced Amazon Fire TV in April 2014. Amazon Fire TV is an app enabled media player that supports media streaming from Amazon Prime and other companies like Netflix and Hulu. Amazon Fire TV looks to be a viable contender in the fast paced entertainment streaming market.
On top of being the world’s largest online retail shopping site, Amazon’s product line also includes e-book readers, tablets, a video streaming set top box, instant video & music streaming, and just recently, they added their very first phone to the lineup.
• Firefly Technology: Firefly combines Amazon’s deep catalog of physical and digital content with multiple image, text and audio recognition technologies to quickly identify web and email addresses, phone numbers, QR and bar codes, plus over 100 million items, including movies, TV episodes, songs, and products. Simply press and hold the dedicated Firefly button to discover helpful information and take action in seconds.
• Printed phone numbers, email, web addresses, QR, and bar codes: Firefly identifies printed text on signs, posters, magazines and business cards—make a call, send an email, save as a contact, or go to the website without typing out long URLs or email addresses.
• 245,000 movies and TV episodes, and 160 live TV channels: Firefly recognizes movies and TV episodes, and uses IMDB for X-Ray to show actors, plot synopses, and related content—add titles to Watch List or download and start watching immediately.
• 35 million songs: Firefly recognizes music and uses Amazon Music’s rich catalog to show information about the artist—play more songs, add them to your Wish List, or download instantly to your Fire. Developers, such as iHeartRadio and StubHub, used the SDK to build Firefly-enabled apps, so customers can create a new radio station based on the song or find concert tickets for the artist.
• 70 million products, including household items, books, DVDs, CDs, video games, and more: Access product details, add items to your Wish List, or order on Amazon.com.
• Mayday is now available over 3G and 4G, in addition to Wi-Fi—simply hit the Mayday button in quick actions and an Amazon expert will appear via live video to co-pilot you through any feature on the device. Amazon experts are able to draw on the screen, talk you through how to do a task, or do it for you—whatever works best. Mayday is available 24x7, 365 days a year, and it’s free. Amazon’s response time goal for Mayday is 15 seconds or less—since launch, the average response time has been 9.75 seconds.
• ASAP (Advanced Streaming and Prediction) predicts which movies and TV episodes you’ll want to watch and prepares them for instant playback before you even hit play.
• X-Ray helps you get more from books, music, movies, and TV shows. Explore the bones of a book, including characters, ideas and background with a single tap on the screen; bring the power of IMDb right to Fire for trivia on movies and TV shows; plus, with X-Ray for Music, see synchronized lyrics display while you listen to your favorite song.
• Second Screen lets you fling TV shows and movies from Fire phone to your Fire TV, PlayStation or any other Miracast-enabled device. Second Screen turns your TV into the primary screen and frees up Fire phone to provide playback controls and a customized display for X-Ray, all without leaving the TV show or movie you’re watching.
• Free unlimited cloud storage of photos taken with Fire, automatically backed-up wirelessly and available across Amazon devices and Cloud Drive apps so you have access anywhere.
• Quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 2.2 GHz processor and 2GB RAM for excellent fluidity and image rendering.
• 4.7-inch HD display with an ambient light sensor and Dynamic Image Contrast that delivers better outdoor viewing.
• Global LTE and connectivity with nine bands of LTE, four bands of GSM, five bands of UMTS for better voice coverage and faster data speeds, 802.11ac support, Wi-Fi channel bonding, NFC, and Bluetooth.
• Dual stereo speakers with Dolby Digital Plus for a virtual surround sound experience.
• Advanced imaging system with custom-tuned 13MP rear-facing camera with backside illumination, LED flash, 5-element f/2.0 lens, Optical Image Stabilization (OIS), and high dynamic range (HDR) capabilities for beautiful, crisp photos, even in low-light conditions. Fire also includes a 2.1MP front-facing camera. Both front and rear-facing cameras record smooth 1080p HD videos.
• Reliable backup and restore leveraging the experience and operational excellence of Amazon Web Services and its cloud technology. Fire customers can automatically back up device settings, notes, bookmarks, messages, and installed applications—no need to manually configure or connect to a computer. Sounds good for devoted Amazon customers, but is it enough to convert customers that are already loyal to their favorite brand of choice?
Over the years Amazon has been amassing its product line and has grown to be much more than a market place just for buying books. Already in direct competition with mobile media giants like Google, Apple, and Samsung, could the new Fire phone be the missing link to help Amazon gain enough of the market share to solidify its place as one of the tops dogs in the mobile media market?
My thoughts: I commend Amazon on the release of their first phone. The Fire phone has the capabilities to be a break out device for 2014 with its 3D features and the Firefly app, but its dependency on Amazon services and the limited Amazon App market could hinder its flagship phone specs from being used to their full capacity. If you’re a big fan of Amazon and everything it has to offer, such as, books, movies, music, and retail shopping and don’t mind needing a paid subscription to keep these services running after your free 1 year subscription to Amazon prime expires, this may just be the phone for you. If you take away the Amazon services, the Fire, may not see much success with similarly priced, stand-alone phones with comparable specs, such as, the HTC One M8, & the Samsung Galaxy S5.
Will you be an early adopter of the Amazon Fire or will you wait to see how the first Amazon phone fairs? Are you willing to leave your current carrier and device to join AT&T and Amazon? Tell us your thoughts.
Posted By Brainy Toads Brandon
