LONDON: Amazon has sold 32GB and 64GB Fire Phone smartphones for £99 and £149 respectively. That sale is only taking place in the UK and both models are still being flogged full price in the US.
They are locked on O2 (you cannot unlock them anywhere) and Amazon is still selling contracts for £28 and £33 per month respectively.
On paper, the phone should be a no-brain winner at this price. It is an LTE model with a quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 800, the same that powers the Sony Xperia Z or the LG G2, both former high-end handsets from the 2013 cuvee.
Add 2GB of RAM, 32GB onboard storage, unlimited Cloud storage, 802.11ac, automatic back-up to cloud, a 13-megapixel camera, a premium audio headset and a 4.7-inch display and users pretty much have a phone that’s unbeatable. But that’s the theory.
Blame the software
Sadly, the phone is only available on O2 and users cannot unlock it, ever, never. Then there’s the Fire OS, Amazon’s forked version of Android which is customised to include everything users might need to become addicted to Amazon.
Mayday, Firefly, Dynamic Perspective, X-Ray and even, on the full priced models, Amazon Prime, its one-day parcel delivery and unlimited streaming service.
