Amazon Announces Fire Phone

Yes everyone was right! Amazon announced the Fire Phone at a special event in Seattle today. Everything about the phone is interesting, and it almost seems like something Google may have built. Amazon lacking in physical stores wants to put the power to shop in your hands with only your phone, so they will be taking your money for a lot longer.

Amazon’s first-ever phone has a 4.7-inch Gorilla Glass display with an HD-resolution screen (720p). That makes it the same size as the Moto X, which was also supposed to be a phone for the masses. It also has a rubberized frame with aluminum buttons, a quad-core 2.2GHz processor, Adreno 330 GPU and 2GB of RAM. As for the camera, there’s a 13-megapixel rear-facing one equipped with an f/2.0 lens and optical image stabilization and the ability to capture 1080p video. The phone’s display will have 590 nits of brightness, dynamic image contrast and a “circular polarizer,” which will likely be used to combat glare. There’s also a dedicated camera key and, luckily for all you amateur photographers, it’ll come with free unlimited cloud storage for photos as well. Other features include global LTE and connectivity with nine bands of LTE, quad-band GSM, five bands of UMTS, 802.11ac support, WiFi channel bonding, NFC and Bluetooth.

It’ll be available exclusively from AT&T for $199 if you want the 32GB version, or $299 if you prefer the 64GB. Alternately, you can get the 32GB version for $27 a month if you opt for AT&T’s Next program. If you’d rather go off-contract instead, you can get the phone directly from Amazon for $649 for 32GB and $749 for 64GB.

How does the phone sound and will consumers be willing to place an Amazon backed, built, and powered phone in their pockets. The phone will encourage you to compare prices in stores so you’ll save money, but with the ability to purchase so easily now more people may make unneeded impulse buys. What Amazon did with Firefly looks like Google Glass combined with Google Now to make the phone a powerful tool that could drive purchases to Amazon more often then in retail stores. Tell us what you think about the phone in the comments below.

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