After launching its first smartphone in the US back in June, Amazon is now bringing the Fire Phone to the UK. Available exclusively through O2, the smartphone is available for pre-order now and will ship on the 30th September 2014. We were available for a pre-launch briefing to find out first-hand what the phone's like.
Dynamic Perspective
One of the key features to the Fire Phone is its pseudo-3D Dynamic Perspective mode. Using the phone's gyroscope and four sensors built into the front of the handset to track the phone's orientation and adjust the onscreen action correspondingly. Move the screen on the lock screen, for example, and the 3D objects shift and move giving you a sense of 3D.
It's pretty clever and the neat lock screens certainly look great. It's important to point out that the system is more than just a gimmick, and Dynamic Perspective is an important part of the operating system, used for one-handed operation.
Tilt the phone to the left and an app-specific side-bar pops up, such as to view mail boxes; tilt it to the right and you get context-sensitive side bar, showing you latest calendar appointments, messages and the like. While you can use swipe gestures to do the same thing, Dynamic Perspective lets you do all of this with a single hand.
There's also a Peak gesture, which involves tilting the device slightly. On the maps app, for example, Peak will populate map pins with more information, such as star ratings for restaurants. It means that the interface can be kept simple and uncluttered, only displaying more information when it's needed.
Auto scroll also uses the phone's sensors, so in the Kindle app or web browser you can tilt the phone forwards to set the scroll speed of a document. For longer pieces of text it's a handy way to read without having to resort to tapping the screen all of the time. Finally, there's the Swivel option, which is activated by moving your wrist in a Frisbee-throwing style. This pops up the settings menu. We need a little more time to play with the system before we can pass final judgement on it, but it's good to see something new that looks genuinely useful.
Firefly
Firefly is a tool designed to let you interact with the real world by scanning objects with the camera. What happens depends on the type of object you're scanning. Use it to scan a product, such as can of baked beans, and you'll get the latest Amazon prices for the object. You can also use it to scan posters and cards in order to extract contact information, such as a telephone, or listen to a film, TV programme or bit of music, in order to tell you what you're watching or listening too. You can launch it by selecting the app or by long pressing the camera button on the side of the handset.
Firefly looked impressive in the demos that we saw, flawlessly pulling out the phone number from a flyer. Light and angle make a difference, though, and you'll need to carefully line-up the camera with the object for Firefly to work at its best. Amazon has said that it's intending to include foreign translation into the mix in the near future.
Fire OS
As this is an Amazon device, it runs Fire OS. Internally it's based on Android, but the two operating systems couldn't be more different. Amazon's home screen interface is built around three panels. The top is a carousel, which displays apps. The second is for the Hero Widget, which displays information from the current app, such as recent emails. Finally, at the bottom you get common app shortcuts, such as for the phone and messages; you can tap this to bring up a traditional app tray.
While the interface is smooth and works well, one disadvantage over Android is that there's no access to the Google Play Store. Instead, you get Amazon's store. It's getting a lot better, but Google won't submit its own apps, so you can't get Gmail or Google Maps apps. We like the Mayday feature, which comes over from the Kindle Fire tablets. This lets you make a free video call to an Amazon representative to ask for help with problems. The support person can access your handset (with your permission) and highlight areas on screen that you need to interact with to solve a problem or use a specific feature.
Screen
As advanced as the Dynamic Perspective mode is, the handset has only a 1,280x720 4.7in display. We'd have thought that Amazon would have used a Full HD screen. That said, at 312ppi, the pixel density here is only just below the iPhone 5S' 326ppi. Everything looked sharp on the Fire Phone's display and the screen was certainly very bright.
Build Quality
Although it's made from plastic, Amazon has done a good job with the build quality. It feels tough, and there's no creakiness of flex in the chassis. We like the look of it too, with its neat rounded edges. Aluminium buttons and a Gorilla Glass front complete the look and feel. The all-metal HTC One (m8) and iPhone 5S may slightly clinch the build quality title, but the Fire Phone isn't too far behind.
Specs
It measures a fairly reasonable 139x67x8.9mm and weighs just 160g. Surprisingly it only has a 1,280x720 resolution display, a step back from the Full HD displays on most new handsets. The chipset used is the popular SnapDragon 800, running at 2.2GHz with 2GB of RAM. A slightly newer version of the chipset, the 801, is now available but the 800 is still blistering fast and should cope fine with anything you can throw at it. The chipset comes with an Adreno 330 GPU, the same one in the HTC One (m8), and which whipped through all our gaming tests.
Amazon is claiming 11 hours of video playback from the handset. Even if true, that's not up to scores we've seen from recent flagship handsets. The Samsung Galaxy S5 scored a whopping 17 and-a-half hours in our video playback test. While we're talking video, we're pleased to see that Amazon has brought across the stereo speaker setup from its tablets, plus there's support for Dolby Digital Plus audio.
It ships with a minimum of 32GB of storage, although a 64GB version is also available. You'll have to make do with the storage you buy, as there's no micro SD card slot to upgrade with. Still, that’s the same as with the iPhone and nobody minds there.
Price and availability
You can only buy the Fire Phone through O2 on contract at the moment. The 32GB version is free on a £33 per month O2 Refresh contract, which includes 2GB of data. You also get one year of Amazon Prime (existing members have one year added to their current subscription), which is worth £79 alone. This could make the Fire Phone a bit of a bargain. We'll bring you a full review of the handset as soon as review samples are available.
