Fire Phone: Out of the Box

Preface

After years of speculation and increasingly realistic rumors, Amazon finally satisfied the public’s request (or at least curiosity) to add a smartphone to its hardware stable. Like the other devices in that stable (beginning with the original Kindle and its evolutionary iterations, continuing with the Kindle Fire and its later versions, and most recently in the Fire TV), the new Fire phone launches with a number of signature features that make it a uniquely Amazonian product.

The most obvious Amazon-only touch is a new feature that lets you instantly identify and order (via Amazon, of course) just about any product imaginable, from DVDs, CDs, and books (or their electronic equivalents) to soup, nuts, or pretty much anything with a barcode. Though the rationale for Amazon including such a feature is pretty obvious, the innovative implementation (in the form of Firefly, discussed in Chapter 3) is nothing short of magical.

Equally impressive is Dynamic Perspective (see Chapter 2), Amazon’s amazing new hyper-3D interface that leaves its defining touches on every screen of the Fire phone’s operating system. Add Mayday, the best customer service technology invented since the telephone (see Chapter 4), along with brand-new one-handed navigational gestures (see Chapter 1) and innovative camera features (see Chapter 5), and you have a realistic contender against the iPhone and Android phones that have already established themselves in the market.

Oh yeah, you can also use it to make ...