Really Amazon Sumaho "Fire Phone" is a failed work What I found after trying for about a week

Amazon's smartphone that Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos sent confidently to the world "Fire PhoneIn contrast to the expectation of Bezos CEO, it is recognized as a "failed work" by the public, given a careful evaluation on the market. As for what I was impatient with Fire Phone,Amazon's Jeff Bezos CEO Why did "Fire Phone" get in touch?In fact, it touches the actual thing for about a week and tried using it and thought about "Fire Phone was really a failure?"

◆ Appearance check
The Fire Phone is a compact black package with embossed surface on the surface and gradation in the surface, the upper part of the surface is not smooth, but the sticking that the embossing becomes more intense gradually as going to the lower part. At this stage you can see that there is an equal or higher level of crisis than Apple sticking to the package.


When opening the box, Fire Phone appeared with a vivid orange interior.


This is all in contents. Fire Phone main body · simple explanation card · SIM card removal pin · USB cable · AC adapter · Earphone is included.


Fire Phone adopts 4.7 inches (1280 x 720) liquid crystal display. The size is 13.92 cm in length × 6.65 cm in width × 0.89 cm in thickness and weighs 160 g. SoC is a Snapdragon 800, 2 GB of memory, 32 GB storage, and the specifications are hardly inferior to the latest high-end models.


Pleasantly looking at other places different from smartphones are a lot of cameras equipped with five on the front. The cameras installed at the four corners are for face motion tracking, and we have a "dynamic perspective" function that tracks the movement of the face with four cameras one by one and achieves naked eye 3D. Of course, besides the motion tracking camera, there is a front camera for video chatting.


The home button is made of aluminum and the texture is good.


On the left side are volume button, camera / Firefly button, SIM card slot. All buttons are made of aluminum.


Speaker and Micro - USB terminal on the bottom.


There are no buttons on the right side. The side part is rubber coated, and it is good with both grip quality and texture.


Earphone jack, speaker, power button on the top.


On the back is a silver color Amazon logo. There is a high-class feeling on the whole glass. The glass is gorilla glass 3 on both the front and back.


Glass is as shiny as the ceiling is easily reflected.


Bezos CEO is said to be stuck with a lens with an F value of 2.0 · 13 million pixels · Rear camera with optical image stabilizer. LED flash is also carried.


You can remove the card slot by inserting the supplied pins into the SIM slot.


Like the iPhone 6 and Nexus 6, the Fire Phone is nano SIM compliant.


Fire PhoneDolby Digital PlusCorrespond to. Although the sound quality of the attached earphone is pretty good, the fit feeling is not good ... ....


The place where the cord is almost not entangled because it is pittap with a magnet is excellent.


I tried using Fire OS
When turning on the power, "fire" logo.


Based on Android, OS adopts Fire OS 3.5 which customized custom made by Amazon, and at the time of article creation, Fire OS 3.6.8 is the latest version.


· Dynamic Perspective
The lock screen where the naked eye 3D function "Dynamic Perspective" of Fire Phone was used is like this.

The naked eye 3D "Dynamic perspective" of Amazon smartphone "Fire Phone" - YouTube


At first it will be "Oh!", But of course there is no practicality. If you get tired of the naked eye 3D gimmick, you can also turn off the dynamic perspective function.

· Fire OS main UI
Fire Phone main screen "Home carousel" is like this. The screen is divided into three large steps, with the thumbnail of the application in the upper row, the relevant information of the application in the middle row, the various icons such as the telephone and the mail in the lower row are arranged.


Swipe from the left edge of the screen ......


In this way additional pages will appear depending on the application and setting screen.


Even swiping from the right edge of the screen ......


Access to additional information. Fire OS adopted by Fire Phones basically has no icon for "Back" or "Setting", and instead it can display additional pages by swiping from the left and right.


Swipe down from the top edge of the screen ......


A quick launch icon such as airplane mode · Wi-Fi · Bluetooth etc. is displayed at the top of the screen, and a notification is displayed in the list at the bottom of the screen.


Also, swipe the screen upwards ......


Switchable to the screen (home screen) where many icons of the application are displayed like iPhone and Android. By swiping the screen up and down you can go back and forth between the 3 division screen and the home screen. In addition, this up / down swipe operation can also be substituted by pressing the home button once.


In addition, when you press the Home button twice in a row, the "Quick Switch" screen appears that allows you to select and switch the running application. You can exit the application by swiping this icon up and down and erasing it. Fire OS itself is an Android base, such as home screen with Home button once, displaying application selection screen running for 2 consecutive times, swiping icon up and down to exit the application, its UI design is extremely iOS It is close.


· Fire OS design
This is a browser application "Silk Browser" adopted by Fire Phone. On the 3-part screen you can display browsing history in the middle row.


When you display the top page of GIGAZINE in Silk Browser, it looks like this. In addition, the Fire Phone has a tilt sensor, you can scroll pages by tilting the Fire Phone back and in front.


You can check how to browse GIGAZINE with Silk Browser in the following movie.

Fire Browsing with Fire Phone like this and YouTube


You can display three columns by setting the screen sideways. However, since the display width (in this case, the vertical direction) is 720 pixels, the amount of information can not be so much.


During browsing, you can display the URL input window at the top of the screen, the back / forward icon and the page selection icon at the bottom of the screen.


Tap the page selection icon to display the page that is open like this, you can also turn on / off private mode and add new tabs at the bottom of the screen.


If you display e-mail with Home carousel, new mail is displayed in the middle row, it is extremely convenient because you can swipe up and down on this middle screen and view e-mail one after another.


·various settings
Fire Phone can change various settings according to usage. Tap "Settings".


The setting items look like this. Setting change is possible in a fairly wide range.


For example, to switch the keyboard to "Japanese input", tap "Keyboad" → "Chanege the keyboard language" in that order.


Since there is no Japanese in the list, tap "Download New Language".


Tap "Japanese".


Tap 'Accept' to download.


"Japanese" is added to the list, so check it and it's ok.


Also, when using the tethering function, tap "Wi-Fi & amp; Networks" → "Set up a Wi-Fi hotspot" in that order.


Set "Wi-Fi Hotspot" to "ON" and tap "Configure Hotspot".


"Network SSID" "Password (Password)" if you like it OK. You can use Fire Phone as an access point.


On smartphones there is sometimes too much data to use, so it is important to manage data usage. To manage data usage, tap "Wi-Fi & amp; Networks" → "See your cellular data usage".


Then you can check data usage and data consumption of various applications. By tapping "Manage Data Limit" ...


You can restrict data usage or display alerts when the set capacity is reached.


· Applications that can be used with Fire OS
Fire OS is an Android-based fork OS,Because you can not use Google Play services, you can not download Android applications from the Google Play Store. Therefore, although you will download special application from Amazon's own "Amazon Appstore", it is currently overwhelmingly disadvantageous compared to iOS · Android application. A famous application that can be used at the time of article creation is like this.

Facebook


Twitter


It is encouraging to have ATOK in Japanese input app.


Yahoo! JAPAN application


Pocket


Famous applications such as Feedly etc. are well prepared for Amazon Appstore. However, at the time of article writing, there are no major browsers such as Chrome · Firefox and Google related applications and lines such as Google Map · Google Now · Hangouts.


Although I do not have SmartNews, Gunosy was prepared so I installed it.


Naturally American news is displayed. So tap the setting icon on the top right of the screen ... ...


"Country (country)" is changed to "Japan" ...


Although it did, still only American news. I did not correspond to Japanese news.


· Firefly function
"Firefly" function which is the eyeball of Fire Phone line up in the dynamic perspective is a function which presents product information when shooting a product package.


When you start Firefly, the camera will start up automatically. When you point the package of the item you want to check, "firefly" of light appears and identifies the product. However, there are still many things that can not be identified, and in that case we will say "We do not know what is is".


Bars with barcodes are almost identifiable. Tap the bar code displayed at the bottom of the screen ... ...


Tap "Search in browser" ......


This product will search for something.


Also, a product thumbnail was displayed on the Home carousel screen. Tap the thumbnail.


The storage capacity is wrong, but the type of goods is. Tap "Shop Amazon" ......


It jumps to the item page of Amazon.com, and it gets spotted.


◆ Summary
I tried Fire Phone for a week, and almost no dissatisfaction came out in terms of performance. It is crisp close to Nexus 5, and the number of pixels of the liquid crystal is 1280 × 720 which is small, but color development, brightness and touch sensitivity are definitely saying Fire Phone is better than Nexus 5.

And the goodness of the Fire OS deki is a level that I admire obediently. Home carousel familiar in the Kindle Fire series of Amazon tablet terminal also felt the poor operability on the icon (thumbnail) which is too large on the tablet terminal, whereas the smart phone has a good size and easy to operate with 2 pane system I feel real. I felt it was easy to use with a UI superior to the Android OS that became the base.

Nonetheless, the biggest disadvantage of Fire Phone is that Google Play is not compatible. Many Android apps can download and install as APK, so many things can be used and it is usable on the OS level, so you can not help saying that you can not use Google Play is very painful. However, as major SNS, RSS readers and YouTube applications are also available in the Amazon Appstore, there seems to be many people who do not become a problem in practice.

Fire Phone The original dynamic features of the dynamic perspective and Firefly should not be considered to be "Uri" to be honest, but to be considered as a bonus. However, even when looking at as a general smart phone without a bonus, it is frank thought that "Ali" enough from the high quality of texture and the performance without complaint.


Initially, since I made a price of $ 649 (about 77,000 yen) under the condition without a mobile line contract, many consumers say "I will buy an iPhone at the same price", he says, "(It is too high for Amazon's smartphone)" For reasons, Amazon's customer review ☆ ☆ One Fire Phone was a successive series, but since then the price has been reduced to $ 449 (about 54,000 yen), the evaluation of customer reviews gradually recovered. Especially, considering that we decided to cut the dramatic price cut of 199 dollars (about 24,000 yen) in the holiday season at the end of 2014, most of the customer reviews became popular enough to be buried with ☆ 5, even if Fire Phone malfunctioned The cause seems to be said to be "price".

As a mobile communication carrier in the United StatesAT & amp; TAlthough it is a Fire Phone selling exclusively, the corresponding LTE band is broadly ranging from 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 17, 20, and includes bands not compatible with AT & T It is no wonder that even if there are other carriers and sales in other countries, it is unlikely that Amazon will sell Fire Phone in the future, in the United States, the UK, Germany and in Japan in the future. Since Fire Phone itself is an excellent smart phone with good hardware and software, depending on pricing, it is likely that there is a possibility of completely changing the evaluation of "failed work" that is currently being accepted.

In addition, SIM lock free Fire Phone (32GB model) is currently on sale at Amazon.com for $ 449 (about 54,000 yen). However, during the period of less than a month from the end of the year to the time of writing the article, there is a significant discount of 199 dollars (about 24,000 yen), 229 dollars (about 26,000 yen), 189 dollars (about 22,000 yen) There is a track record of selling, so there may be opportunities to become very cheap depending on the timing.

Amazon Fire Phone - Unlocked GSM, 13 MP Camera - Shop Now
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00OC0USA6