Earlier this summer, Amazon made a big splash when it unveiled its first smartphone – the Fire Phone. It revealed some truly interesting features that don’t exist on other phones.
When the reviews came out, however, people were left far from impressed, and sales haven’t been very good based on various estimates. That’s probably why Amazon just announced that the device is now available for 99 cents (down from 199) with a two-year contract. That should help. It even still includes the free year of Prime, which even Amazon seemed to consider the biggest selling point, as it was the focus of the device’s first commercial.
“With access to all of the Prime content, Mayday, 32GB of memory and free unlimited cloud storage for photos, plus the exclusive Dynamic Perspective and Firefly features, Fire is another example of the value Amazon delivers to customers,” said Ian Freed, Vice President, Amazon Devices.
The device is only available through AT&T in the U.S.
Here are the positive quotes about the phone, which it says is “what Amazon Fire customers are saying”:
“The best part of the phone is the integration with Prime – I’ve switched all of my iTunes music over to Amazon Music and have bought a few albums from my phone. The sound from the included headphones is amazing. I’ve watched some movies and read some books – all synced to my Kindle Fire HDX and the movies with my Fire TV.”
“Mayday: I feel this truly separates this phone from every other phone in the market. It’s like having someone available 24×7 to help you out with your phone…and, there is no charge for that ‘ever.’”
“Love it, better than the iPhone I had, Better pictures and better screen…My wife is switching from her iPhone 5 to Fire since she has checked out my FIRE.”
“I’ve had three Kindle Fire tablets, and this Fire phone hooks seamlessly to their ecosystem of books and videos, which I use heavily in my professional work so that’s important to me.”
“The Firefly feature is fun, and the camera takes fabulous pictures and videos.”
“If you’re an Amazon Prime user, it can’t get better than this. The support for the Amazon ecosystem is amazing.”
What the actual reviews were saying isn’t quite so rosy. You can read some of that here.
Still, most seemed to agree that Amazon will likely make improvements with a future model, which could make a better impression. Let’s not consider Amazon’s efforts a failure just yet.
Image via Amazon