Amazon Fire Phone

Post by _up » Wed, Jun 18, 2014, 8:06 PM UTC

toddmorey wrote: post #112

ultimoo wrote: post #36

I am always a little skeptical about gestures that involve physically moving or tilting or swivelling the phone. Maybe it works well for others but I find it getting very much in the way when I use my phone in bed, or lying around on the couch, or walking even. On my iPhone 5, I have the screen rotation locked for about 99% of the time.

I think the subtle tilt-to-scroll paradigm, if it works well, could become widely adopted. It seems to make one-handed scrolling much more approachable without any fingers obscuring content. Question: Does it seem like it requires the camera system to make it usable or could it be done reliably with just the accelerometers now common in smart phones?

Post by DannyBee » Wed, Jun 18, 2014, 8:06 PM UTC

lightblade wrote: post #43

ultimoo wrote: post #36

I am always a little skeptical about gestures that involve physically moving or tilting or swivelling the phone. Maybe it works well for others but I find it getting very much in the way when I use my phone in bed, or lying around on the couch, or walking even. On my iPhone 5, I have the screen rotation locked for about 99% of the time.

Remember this is paired with Dynamic Perspective. So maybe we'll see it detects the orientation of your face before deciding on what to do.

Post by nailer » Wed, Jun 18, 2014, 8:07 PM UTC

asafira wrote: post #127

nostromo wrote: post #120

The market positioning here seems very un-Amazon. "Your margin is my opportunity" is probably my favorite Bezosism. Given that perspective and Apple's very cushy margins, I expected Amazon not to approach the market with an expensive phone packed with new features, but to approach the market from the bottom, with a good phone that is free or nearly free. The problem, of course, is that Google seems to have that segme…

Why does this seem to be targeted at Android? If anything, I would say the price differential between this and good android phones reflects that it might be more an iphone competitor if anything, and so it seems to be more targeted at Apple.

Post by jonknee » Wed, Jun 18, 2014, 8:09 PM UTC

JohnTHaller wrote: post #70

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is this remotely competitive in a world full of $179 Moto G's? $219 Moto G LTE's? Or even a $350 Nexus? This seems like a phone from two or three years ago where $650 for a non-premium brand would have been passable. I just bought a Moto G LTE for my wife and its a wonderful phone. I don't see what Amazon would bring to the table for an extra $420. That's almost 10 months of service right there.

I don't think it is. Except for people who buy on-contract and don't know better about the pricing and features compared to other phones. Heck, you're even stuck with Amazon's Silk browser... there's no Firefox or Chrome in the Amazon App Store... so most users can forget about syncing this with anything.

Post by hershel » Wed, Jun 18, 2014, 8:09 PM UTC

tolmasky wrote: post #119

Zelphyr wrote: post #69

Sounds like this phone does a good job of solving Amazon's problem of getting customers to buy more from them. I don't see how it makes my life any easier though. 3D? Ok, that is really cool. 2D hasn't really been a limiting factor for me though. One-handed navigation and autoscrolling? Wow, that just sounds terrible. I'm trying to read and my kid bumps my arm. Now where am I on the page? And how do I quickly get bac…

Perhaps my consumer lifestyle strangely aligns Amazon's incentives with mine, but I'm actually really happy how they solved the problem of me buying more stuff from them. It seems that they observed very common patterns people already use poorly and streamlined them. Case in point, almost everyone I know takes pictures of books and items they want to buy or investigate further later. Currently this 1) clutters my Pho…