To survive in the smart phone arena, Amazon needed to make sure people got something way different when they got an Amazon (Fire) phone. Though the 4 cameras a neat, and the head tracking is interesting for 3D gaming (both which Amazon was touting as amazing). Nothing compares to the following 3 game changers for all Smart phones going forward:
1) Probably the biggest changer is photo storage. Amazon has put a huge and wonderful 13MP camera on the back of this new phone (better than Apple). But who cares if you are just uploading to Facebook. You see, most people don't know this, but Facebook is completely ruining all of your family photos! When you upload the photo to Facebook, the resolution on the photos is severely decreased. Thus, if you ever try to print photos from Facebook, or redownload the photos from Facebook to print them, forget it! The picture quality will now be too terrible to print. I am not talking a little pixelated when you print them. I am talking completely gross looking versions of the original photo you took. So, what is the solution? Online storage. Apple and Google are both happy to provide you with that option for a price. And, it is no small price, it is huge! How does Amazon counter that? They give you a huge camera and completely unlimited Free storage of all of those photos you have taken. Never ruin a family photo again!!! I have been trying to use Amazon's only real competition (Yahoo's Flickr) that also allows you to have unlimited free online storage, but the experience has been pretty terrible. That service is either completely slow or not working about 1/3 of the time. Very frustrating.
2) Speaking of frustrating, Amazon's second game changer addresses just that: frustration with technology. The next game changer is Mayday! If you haven't heard of it yet, you will. Basically if you ever get stuck doing something on your new Amazon phone, you simply press a button, and an actually person pops up and fixes your phone for you. You talk to them and tell them what is wrong, and they fix it. Wow. All user errors have just been eliminated!
3) Firefly is the 3rd Game changer. I know, I am still trying to wrap my brain around why this one is so cool. Basically there is a button on the side of the phone you press which makes your phone a scanner. Then you can scan anything and get info about the thing you scanned. You can scan pictures, art, books, magazines, that song on the radio, that movie. No more trying to imdb that actor, or fumbling around for the app that id's music. One button ID's everything and tells you the info you need. How long will it be until we can with one button press, scan insects and snakes to ID them and find out how dangerous they are or if they even bite. I'm telling you, it will be a game changer.
4) You get Amazon Prime for a year. Yes, I know this will result in Amazon just schilling more of it's products. But think about it. With Amazon Prime, you get a year of free shipping, a year of free movies and tv shows comparable to Netflix (I know Netflix is still better but Amazon is gaining and could be way worse - think Redbox instant), and you get a year of free streaming music. Music that you now can pick specific artists, or songs or albums to listen to. Again, this is a game changer to get a really great service for free for a year.
In the end, yes, I would have liked to have seen Amazon make a phone that helps me fly or fixes my dinner for me, but in the meantime, I'll settle for a phone that changes the game in 4 major ways that the other phone companies will surely be chasing in the months and years to come.
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