Table of Contents
amazon Amazon Fire Phone reviews
Advantage:
– Good hardware, optimal.
– Rigid design, easy grip.
– Firefly function useful.
– FireOS operating system stable, beautiful interface.
– Good camera.
– Battery life is high.
Disadvantages:
– Glass material is broken and scratched.
– Dynamic Perspective function has very few applications.
– Apps on the Amazon Appstore store are slow to update compared to the Apple App Store and Google Play Store.
Hardware and screen
Fire Phone has a slim rectangular design with a single black version. The back and front are pretty shiny glasses. The contact point between the frame and the screen is a high elasticity. The look of this smartphone is quite similar to the style of Google Nexus 4 produced by LG.
The front cover is also reminiscent of the iPhone 4 / 4S but the whole machine is black (while the iPhone 4 / 4S is silver). The glass is easy to stick to fingerprints, especially for those who sweat. However, the overall design of the Fire Phone looks really sturdy.
Next to the Home button to bring home the screen interface, Fire Phone also has a built-in hard camera button. This button also has a quick firefly application launcher. If other Android smartphones have built-in Back button or hard key on the machine to return to the page before surfing the web or other applications, the Fire Phone has a function of Back (interesting) is shaking machine from the bottom up.
With a screen size less than 5 inches, it makes use of Fire Phone more comfortable to use on one hand. As CEO Jeff Bezos of Amazon said from the launch, the machine is quite sure to hold on the hands thanks to the round shape of the frame and slim design with a screen size of 4.7 inches.
The screen of the Fire Phone supports a resolution of 1280 × 720 pixels, the equivalent of the same size Moto X smartphone. This product is considered to be in the middle of the iPhone 5s and large screen smartphones such as the HTC One M8. Or Samsung Galaxy S5. The actual display quality is not equal to the screen resolution of Full HD or 2K, but the image is quite sharp and the user has virtually no vision problems.
Especially, thanks to the IPS screen, the Fire Phone has enough brightness for comfortable outdoor use, and high viewing angles are also a plus. Unlike smartphones that use AMOLED panels, the images are often too colorful, unlike the actual Fire Phone can display images with high fidelity.
Compared to other smartphones of the same size, the Fire Phone is quite heavy because it contains the hardware needed to support Dynamic Perspective based on user gestures. The weight of the machine is equivalent to the HTC One M8, while the M8 has a larger screen size of 5 inches.
Dynamic Perspective Function
One of the unique and unique features of today’s Fire Phone is the animated Perspective that Amazon calls Dynamic Perspective. This function creates a 3D user interface based on the gestures of the eyes and face based on four image sensors located in front of the screen.
When turning to different directions, the 3D display on the screen also has different perspectives as in the real world. Applications can exploit this technology to increase interactivity, such as map applications, weather views, and more.
The lock screen of the Fire Phone is animated dynamically impressive. On-screen objects such as Earth, sky or day also rotate in a 3D space when the user’s head is diverted.
Other tools also exploit this technology, such as “Peek” on Fire Phone. This function can help you change the type of display or perform a certain operation by simply tilting the phone. The Yelp app also supports tilting the phone to see user responses on a 3D map interface.
It can be said, this feature really attracts and Amazon is more prominent than other Android smartphones, even the iPhone. Smartphone Fire Phone is not simply a rigid device with a simple 2D interface that can meet the viewing angle with different interfaces to make the user feel more real, not “virtual” as on the Another phone.
Firefly function
If the Dynamic Perspective dynamic perspective helps make the environment more user-friendly, Firefly makes everyday life more comfortable for the user. Just use the Firefly function to scan barcodes, QR codes, phone numbers, items, merchandise or brands in real-time for information and prices on Amazon.
Firefly can not be said to be a simple application like email or maps, which is a real new technology. Users only need to launch Firefly application, all the information about the world will be displayed clearly on the phone screen. Scan speed and display information fast and almost instantly.
Amazon says it is working with Vivino developer, currently has a wine label app on the Amazon Store, the Apple App Store, and Google Play for inclusion in Firefly.
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FireOS operating system
Fire Phone is integrated version 3.5 of FireOS, a version of the operating system based on the Android kernel, has been integrated on the tablet Kindle Fire HDX. Basically, this operating system is still in Android 4.2.2 version and will be 4.4 in the near future.
The FireOS operating system uses the same interface as the Kindle Fire tablet with a multi-layered interface. By default, the home screen will have four application icons that can be customized according to the user preferences in the bottom bar. The above are the most commonly used applications.
FireOS usage is relatively new to first-time users. Therefore, there will be a wizard for you to get acquainted. The icons, the application interface is beautifully designed and characterized by Amazon. Although it also uses Android, but the level of customization of FireOS is very high, the speed response is smooth, it is difficult to recognize this is the operating system from the core of the Google Android platform.
FireOS 3.5 also includes basic applications such as the Blink based Silk browser, the Mail e-mail client that can synchronize your contacts and calendar with your Gmail or Exchange account. Text messaging, weather, calculator, watch, photo viewer, music player, movie player, book reader, magazines … are also designed with eye-catching and impressive interface. Cloud Storage Amazon Cloud Drive is also integrated deep inside the operating system for users to back up and upload unlimited photos.
Although the basic applications integration is very useful and handy, the Virtual Assistant of Fire Phone has very few functions. Unlike Siri on iOS, Google Now or Microsoft’s Cortana, FireOS Virtual Assistant can only make calls, text messages, emails and web searches. This is a function that Amazon needs to improve to keep up with other competitors like the iPhone and the Android mobile phone, Windows Phone.
On the application store and ecosystem, besides the featured applications of Amazon, users can download and install additional utilities from the Amazon Appstore. However, compared to the Play Store, the number of applications is not much and sometimes the older version. But most applications browsed to the Amazon Appstore are pretty stable and quality to run well on Fire Phone.
Camera
The Fire Phone is equipped with a 13 megapixel main camera with LED flash. The camera features a 5 f / 2.0 aperture lens, supports OIS optical stabilization, HDR shooting and 1080p video recording.
Users can launch the camera with the application from the home screen or from the hard button on the screen. From sleep mode, you just press the camera button for 2 seconds to start shooting.
In addition to normal shooting and video recording, the camera also features HDR Mode and Lenticular mode (12 shots for Dynamic Perspective 3D images).
Users can also install additional camera applications from the Amazon Appstore, but few apps support Amazon’s animation.
The quality of the actual shots of the Fire Phone is high in sharpness, color and brightness. The night vision function is good thanks to the OIS function, but the colors seem paler than the actual environment.
Performance and battery usage
The performance of the Fire Phone can be said to be very good compared to the configuration it is equipped with. With the SoC Snapdragon 800 chip, the quad-core CPU is rumored to have a 2.2 GHz clock but actually runs at 2.15 GHz. Compared to other competitors like the Nexus 5 and Samsung Note 3, the benchmark scores seem to be low, but when used in practice it is very smooth.
In terms of battery life, the Fire Phone has an advantage over its competitors, which can reach 12 hours of continuous surfing with 200 nits of brightness, a higher number than the Samsung Galaxy SV, HTC One M8 or Apple iPhone 5s.