Assessing Amazon Fire Phone – An Assistive Technology Perspective:
I can write a three page essay on why the sales figure for the Amazon Fire Phone has been so dismal, but it’s a combination of poor market research, failure to understand smart-phone eco system, mediocre software development and of course, pricing. The reason why pricing isn’t the most important factor is because, all other things being equal, people were perfectly willing to spend $600+ on LG G Flex on December 2013, Galaxy Note 3/LG G3 on June 2014, and Galaxy Note 4 and iPhone 6 in January 2015; Releasing in July 2014 as an AT&T exclusive, Fire phone with its October 2013 specification (Snapdragon 800/13 MP camera with optical stabilization) was a very late entrance to the game. It has the same specification as my LG G Flex (minus the optical stablizer), and I already bought my G Flex in February that year, there was no reason for me to buy the almost exact same phone, unless Amazon gives me some serious incentive. Well, the incentive came last week (January 7, 2015) Amazon put the Fire Phone (unlocked version too) on Sale for $189.00, to sweeten the deal, they included a full year of Prime Membership that worth $99, so factor in the Prime Membership, they were selling a smartphone with the market value of about $400 and costs around $150 to make for $90. But they are not hiring me to do this kind of analysis, so I will stop here and look at it from the viewpoint of a disabled person:
Essentially, Amazon introduced two new technologies, Dynamic Perspective and Firefly, with four front camera functioning as dynamic movement sensor, it can be easily controlled with one hand by twisting, tilting and swiveling the phone to activate side/top menu, if an user loses the use of one hand while retaining the full use of the other, then I’d imagine, Fire Phone would be perfect, but if you have partial use of both hands, then stick with two hand control. I am not sure if it’s ergonomically beneficial for anyone to be twisting the wrist muscle of a single hand that much. I feel my left wrist straining after doing those movements after about just 45 minutes, but that's just me. There are two downsides to Dynamic Perspective Technology, the battery drain and its rather moody temperament; The 4 front camera sensors acting as a constant drain on battery life, and Amazon only bestowed its beloved phone with a 2400 mAh battery, it needs either a 3600 mAh battery or an expandable battery compartment for Dymamic Perspective to be practical; There is always the option of turning Dynamic Perspective off, but what's the point of buying a Fire Phone if you are just going to turn off the signature functions? Another shortcoming I mentioned is that one has to twist the phone in a certain way, or the side/top menu would not trigger, more often than not, people with disability (like me for instance) do not have sufficient motor control to be able to twist and swievel "perfectly" every time, a good software would "know" to compensate. That being said, I do feel quite happy when the twisting does triggr the side menu, so Amazon is on the right track.
For a blind or visually impaired person, skip this one, Apple is still the gold industry standard, and 4,7 inch display makes reading rather uncomfortable, and last time I checked, Amazon forgot to allow users to change the display font. I also found the virtual assistance function tragically inadequate. Unlike Apple's Siri and Microsoft's Cortana, Amazon's nameless Virtual assistance can only make calls, send texts, send email, and search directions; it does not answer basic questions like, "what time is it? or tell cormy jokes or refuse to marry me, and I generally have reservations toward technologies that I can't propose to. To be fair, it does come with both magnifier and screen readerrs, but I think virtual assistants are playing an increasingly important role in Smartphone for people with low vision. Hopefully when Alexa (Amazon Echo server) wakes up, she would live in the Fire Phone too, and reject my marriage proposal with classic one-liners like, "My End-user license agreement does not cover marriage." The voice recognition function on Fire Phone is surprisingly good, in that it understands me( a person with CP) for about 60% of the time, to put things in perspective, Dragon 12 only manages that much.
Firefly is the technology I really like, it's an object/voice/image recognizer that shows once and for all why Fire Phone is an amazon baby, it can recognize songs, films, objects and then tell you the link to buy the item on the world's scariest retailer.
Fire phone suffers the same genetic defect as all her Fire cousins, the conspicuous lack of apps. While the relatively poor eco system of the amazon app store is something I am prepared to live with when it comes to tablet (which most people just uses to watch movies and read books); the conspicuously lack of app is unacceptable for a smartphone, because people do a lot more with their Smartphone than they do with a tablet. How do you pay your phone bill if your smartphone does not carry the carrier app, or the app made by your bank? This shortcoming, judging by the number of users hacking the Fire Phone to run Google Play Store, is potentially fatal and in no small way, contributes to the dismal sales figure for the phone.
In short, Fire Phone is on the right track in what it attempts to do, but compare with google, the software and appstore eco system are decidedly inferior. It has fast processor, (though not the fastest) and an awesome camera, if you are willing to tolerate the dreadful app eco system, it is a neat little device that would remind you to buy items you don't even recognize. :)
Essentially, Amazon introduced two new technologies, Dynamic Perspective and Firefly, with four front camera functioning as dynamic movement sensor, it can be easily controlled with one hand by twisting, tilting and swiveling the phone to activate side/top menu, if an user loses the use of one hand while retaining the full use of the other, then I’d imagine, Fire Phone would be perfect, but if you have partial use of both hands, then stick with two hand control. I am not sure if it’s ergonomically beneficial for anyone to be twisting the wrist muscle of a single hand that much. I feel my left wrist straining after doing those movements after about just 45 minutes, but that's just me. There are two downsides to Dynamic Perspective Technology, the battery drain and its rather moody temperament; The 4 front camera sensors acting as a constant drain on battery life, and Amazon only bestowed its beloved phone with a 2400 mAh battery, it needs either a 3600 mAh battery or an expandable battery compartment for Dymamic Perspective to be practical; There is always the option of turning Dynamic Perspective off, but what's the point of buying a Fire Phone if you are just going to turn off the signature functions? Another shortcoming I mentioned is that one has to twist the phone in a certain way, or the side/top menu would not trigger, more often than not, people with disability (like me for instance) do not have sufficient motor control to be able to twist and swievel "perfectly" every time, a good software would "know" to compensate. That being said, I do feel quite happy when the twisting does triggr the side menu, so Amazon is on the right track.
For a blind or visually impaired person, skip this one, Apple is still the gold industry standard, and 4,7 inch display makes reading rather uncomfortable, and last time I checked, Amazon forgot to allow users to change the display font. I also found the virtual assistance function tragically inadequate. Unlike Apple's Siri and Microsoft's Cortana, Amazon's nameless Virtual assistance can only make calls, send texts, send email, and search directions; it does not answer basic questions like, "what time is it? or tell cormy jokes or refuse to marry me, and I generally have reservations toward technologies that I can't propose to. To be fair, it does come with both magnifier and screen readerrs, but I think virtual assistants are playing an increasingly important role in Smartphone for people with low vision. Hopefully when Alexa (Amazon Echo server) wakes up, she would live in the Fire Phone too, and reject my marriage proposal with classic one-liners like, "My End-user license agreement does not cover marriage." The voice recognition function on Fire Phone is surprisingly good, in that it understands me( a person with CP) for about 60% of the time, to put things in perspective, Dragon 12 only manages that much.
Firefly is the technology I really like, it's an object/voice/image recognizer that shows once and for all why Fire Phone is an amazon baby, it can recognize songs, films, objects and then tell you the link to buy the item on the world's scariest retailer.
Fire phone suffers the same genetic defect as all her Fire cousins, the conspicuous lack of apps. While the relatively poor eco system of the amazon app store is something I am prepared to live with when it comes to tablet (which most people just uses to watch movies and read books); the conspicuously lack of app is unacceptable for a smartphone, because people do a lot more with their Smartphone than they do with a tablet. How do you pay your phone bill if your smartphone does not carry the carrier app, or the app made by your bank? This shortcoming, judging by the number of users hacking the Fire Phone to run Google Play Store, is potentially fatal and in no small way, contributes to the dismal sales figure for the phone.
In short, Fire Phone is on the right track in what it attempts to do, but compare with google, the software and appstore eco system are decidedly inferior. It has fast processor, (though not the fastest) and an awesome camera, if you are willing to tolerate the dreadful app eco system, it is a neat little device that would remind you to buy items you don't even recognize. :)
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