By Geoffrey A. Fowler
The big idea in Amazon's first smartphone is that you can
control the screen just by moving your head. Amazon's Fire phone
promises to draw you into a 3-D world where things happen without a
touch.
But in reality, the Fire is the grown-up equivalent of a
9-year-old riding a bike with his hands in the air. "Look, Ma, no
hands!" It's a neat gimmick, but it won't get you very far.
The $199 phone is packed with a number of such technological
bells and whistles that seem clever, for about a day. Amazon has
taken worthwhile steps to simplify using the Android operating
system, but on the smartphone fundamentals, the Fire stumbles.
* In the past five days, I couldn't once get the Fire's battery
to last to day's end--a telephonic cardinal sin.
* Don't expect to get all the apps you love: Though it runs on a
version of Google's Android operating system, Google apps like
Maps, Drive and YouTube are locked out. And the Fire can't transfer
most app purchases from previous phones.
* The controls that track your head, which Amazon calls "dynamic
perspective," never become as natural and predictable as just
touching the screen with your fingers.
The root of the problem is Amazon's oversize ambitions for its
phone, which begins shipping this week. Entering the smartphone
market so late, Amazon might have stuck to its mission of ever
cheaper, easier and more efficient--perhaps making an inexpensive
handset or an extra long-lasting battery.
Instead, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said he wanted to engineer a
better smartphone user experience. He smartly gave this
first-generation Fire 32 GB of memory, but larded it up with other
features of questionable utility and priced it to compete with
mature $200 handsets like the iPhone 5S and Samsung Galaxy S5. (All
three require a contract; the iPhone and Galaxy come with half the
memory.) The comparison seems almost unfair, but it's the one
Amazon wants us to make.
The Fire does some things well. None is a reason most people
would switch. The screen holds up adequately in sunlight and
measures 4.7-inches, a great size to balance grip and thumb reach.
The headphones include flat cable and magnetic buds that help
prevent tangles. It also has a user interface that clears away the
clutter and confusing layout of most Android phones, including
easy-to-read panels that emerge from the sides and a home-screen
"carousel" with big icons for your most-used apps. Too often,
though, it wastes space under those icons recommending things for
you to buy.
All Fire owners get a free year of Amazon's $99 Prime shipping
and media-streaming service, which defrays the phone's cost. The
most helpful original feature, borrowed from Amazon's tablets, is a
service called Mayday that speedily connects you with live tech
support.
That's the end of the good news. The Fire's rear camera, which
includes a lens that's supposed to stabilize images, is close to,
but not better than, the reigning champ iPhone 5S. The Fire takes
photos at a higher resolution, but images of night landscapes and
dark restaurants lacked the detail and natural color I could pick
up with the iPhone.
The biggest reason I wouldn't switch to a Fire is its battery,
which like the iPhone is sealed inside and can't be replaced. The
phone usually died after about three-quarters of a day's ordinary
use--calling, surfing, emailing, mapping and listening to
music--and often got warm to the touch. In my battery torture test,
which involves streaming a video over Wi-Fi with the screen at 50%,
the Fire lasted just 6 hours and 40 minutes, 16% less than the
Galaxy, and 25% less than the iPhone.
Amazon says the Fire's battery was designed to last a full day
for the average user. To ensure I didn't have a lemon, I actually
swapped out my first test model, whose battery lasted less than
four hours in regular use.
Given the competition, Amazon makes it harder than it should to
switch to the Fire. First, it's available only on the AT&T
network in the U.S. Second, because Amazon made its own version of
Android, the Fire doesn't come with Google's Play app store, so you
must re-buy all of your apps from Amazon. Amazon added Uber,
WhatsApp and Instagram for the Fire's launch, but apps I use
regularly that still aren't available include Starbucks, LinkedIn
and Snapchat. Amazon says it expects a LinkedIn app soon and is in
discussion with these other app makers. In the future, Fire will
likely battle with Microsoft and Samsung for app developers who
have already prioritized Apple and Google.
The apps I missed most are made by Google. Instead of Google
Maps, Amazon made its own maps app. It got the location wrong of
the house where I grew up, but it isn't as flawed as Apple's first
attempt at maps in 2012.
These deficiencies make it difficult to even have a debate over
the new technologies that Amazon created for the Fire. I give
Amazon credit for creatively entering the smartphone game with two
original ideas. I just don't think you need either.
One idea is that the Fire can make it easier to compare prices
and shop--on Amazon, of course. A camera mode called Firefly
conducts a visual search on whatever's in front of it, including a
product, TV show, a phone number, email or Web address. This works
best with products in clearly marked packages and signs with large
type. It repeatedly read my business card email as
"geuffrey.fuwler@wsj.co".
Amazon says Firefly works on more than 100 million items--but
even if it were perfect, what problem is it solving, exactly?
Firefly doesn't add much to the ability we already have to compare
prices using product-ID features in Amazon's existing apps. I had
the most hope for the Fire's 3-D-like "dynamic perspective"
technology. Computing changed back in 2007 when Apple introduced
multi-touch screens on the iPhone. Yet there's no reason touch has
to be the only way we operate a phone; it requires lots of
compromises, including poor typing and greasy screens.
Firefly might, in face, make it too easy: One time I used it to
identify a box of Multi-Grain Cheerios, accidentally clicked and
bought a pack of four. That was a case of user error, but I didn't
realize my mistake until I got an email receipt. (Amazon said it
has added steps in the ordering process to prevent such user
mistakes.)
So Amazon's big idea is making the Fire phone watch you,
tracking your face for cues. To do this, it added four extra
cameras to the front of the phone and built software that moves the
images on the screen with you.
It makes for some pretty 3-D icons and animated lock-screen
images. Inside the maps app, dynamic perspective makes it look like
you're one of Amazon's drones hovering above renderings of
buildings.
You have to learn how to command the phone with your head or how
you hold the phone: Turn just a little bit to peek around buildings
on the map, or quickly flick the phone to open a side panel with
other options. Tilting the phone back makes websites scroll down,
which is handy.
Soon enough, though, it starts to feel like a gimmick. This
flicking and nodding only worked for me only about three-quarters
of the time--just ineffective enough to be a deal-breaker. The
hardest part was getting the battery life at the top of the screen
to show up. By default it disappears from view unless you peek in
the upper right corner. And trust me, nobody wants to be that
person on the train twitching at his phone.
There are similar challenges for televisions, which we've long
controlled with clunky remotes. Some TV and game console makers
have tried gesture-tracking, but so far they, too, feel awkward and
imprecise. With both phones and TVs, I'm most hopeful for voice
recognition tech, like the kind Amazon integrated brilliantly into
its Fire TV streaming box, but the Fire phone doesn't currently
have much of.
The phone handset business is in need of new ideas, so I'm
actually rooting for Amazon to make inroads that might disrupt the
giants. But Amazon's first Fire isn't going to spark much.
Write to Geoffrey A. Fowler at
Geoffrey.Fowler@wsj.com
or on Twitter
@geoffreyfowler
.
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