I wanted to write this review about the Fire Phone because mostly because I had a curiosity and because it was really cheap which certainly is a much different place from where it started. Also it's had some software updates that simply aren't reflected in early reviews.
The phone is made of glass on both sides, kinda like an older iPhone. I'm sure people have their opinions about it but I don't really. The size is nice though. It's 4.7" roughly the same size as an iPhone 6 but thicker which might be better because I find those awkward to hold because they are so thin. It's pretty non-descript, a black rectangle only really distinguishable by the 4 camera holes on the front from most other Android flagships. The screen is 720p so it doesn't have an absurd DPI but really it doesn't need to as it looks just fine. I didn't even remember until I sat down to write this.
I took a few pictures with the camera and they came out pretty nice. The camera does have OIS and shoots at 13MP. The really high-end phones can produce better shots but for what it costs now it destroys any other device in the category.
Overall the hardware is nice and a great value. It comes equipped with a Snapdragon 800, 802.11ac, NFC, a barometer in addition to the Dynamic Perspective cameras. Basically putting it on the same level or better than a Nexus 5 minus the 1080p screen and for quite a bit less.
The story gets a bit more interesting when you get into the Fire Phone specific stuff.
Dynamic perspective stuff works just fine but doesn't really seem to add anything. The killer app for it so far seems to be the lock screens which look really nice (no seriously they are really cool) and are fun to play with. As far as apps go, there's little that uses it. The peek gesture (slightly tilt head or device to the side to show extra info like tooltips) is okay to use. The biggest use is to show the status bar in full screen apps which is cool but oddly on the homescreen no space is saved, the text just disappears from the top bar when looking full on which I don't understand (you can always show status bars if you want which is what I did even a the expense of a slight amount of space in apps). There's also auto scrolling in some apps like reading and the browser that works when you tilt the phone. This works alright and I found it to be usable when scrolling down but due to the way you hold it, less so scrolling up. While the productivity uses are not especially compelling, it was a bit more interesting in games. Amazon's Game Studio has a game called Tofu Fury which is a flinging type game with some production value. What's interesting is that it uses the Dynamic Perspective to let you look around the level for hidden items. It's a $2 phone game but a decent tech demo for the phone's capabilities.
There are little flourishes here and there like perspective changing icons that make you go "neat" but other things seemed a bit forced like the ugly drop shadow text on several of the menus. I think overall Dynamic Perspective is not the defining feature of the phone, it has interesting novelty but not real killer feature and it suffer from a bit of heavy-handed "let's put it in everything" when it should be handled a bit more softly and thoughtfully.
The gestures work too. Once I figured it out it didn't register false positives and it was pretty reliable but it doesn't feel comfortable especially at first. You need to first twist toward you and then away, it's not a normal flick or tilt and as a result doesn't feel natural. I suppose it's nice if your other hand isn't free but I'm unsure I'll use it otherwise. You can also turn off the gestures altogether if you really want but that doesn't seem necessary as the option to have it hasn't bothered me.
The overall UI is kinda like Fire OS for Fire tablets but not quite. Optimized apps use a 3 panel approach. The center panel is the business area, the left is what is normally the hamburger menu and the right is some nifty feature. I really like this paradigm as it takes a second to learn but the consistency means that most apps don't need a hamburger icon or or tabbed panels letting the apps take fullscreen. You can use the swivel gesture described above to open them or just swipe in from that side. Of course most apps are just Android, only a handful outside of Amazon's will actually be used to full effect.
The home screen houses the iconic Fire OS carousel, though they have added some more widgety functionality under them like recent calls, emails or quick actions and if the app doesn't support it like most Android apps it'll give you a recommendations for similar apps (you can turn this off). You can swipe up or use the home button to get a standard grid (this is also how you get back to home). Swiping or swiveling left will get you a menu with all the default apps, swiping or swiveling right gets you a Google Now-ish view with the weather and, at least in my case, any recently changed statuses of my Amazon orders. Double tapping home gets you a running app switcher or lets you close apps by swiping up, pretty standard. You can swipe down to get the standard Android menu with airplane mode, flashlight etc. Amazon also put a Mayday button here. I didn't use it on the Fire Phone but I also assume it's the same Mayday on the Fire HDX which was pretty awesome when I had to use it. You push the button and in about 10 seconds you can talk to a service rep who can guide you through things on the device and seem to have a lot of leeway with how they can help you. There's also an extremely limited voice command interface if you long press the home button that can make calls to people, emails or do a web search. Hopefully they'll tear this out soon and replace it with the much more useful Alexa.
As you might expect Amazon doesn't have all the apps you can find in the Play Store but it has a lot of major ones so your milage may vary depending on what you need. I tried to sideload Google Voice and it didn't work but I also sideloaded Dropbox and the Pebble app (and paired it with my watch) which both worked just fine. It would seem as long as the app isn't dependent on Google Play Services it'll work (sideloading this is somewhat complicated, more trouble than it was worth). Amazon's stock apps are pretty good if a bit basic. The fancier features of Google or Apple maps aren't here (they do however have fancy 3d buildings that shift view) but you can get directions which includes public transit instructions. Email likewise is a list of most recent mail and calendar is well, a calendar. The photo app has a neat feature that uses the Dynamic Perspective stuff to create "lenticular" photos. These are like the lenticular holograms that change when you tilt your head. The media apps are all Amazon and they are all optimized versions of what you're used to. It also has a wallet app that lets you scan in gift and loyalty cards.
Of course one of the most advertised features is Firefly. The Fire Phone has a camera button to quick launch the camera (I really wish more devices did this) but if you hold it for a couple seconds (or launch the app in the menu) you get Firefly. Firefly is essentially a visual search engine. You can use it to scan all sorts of things like QR codes, barcodes, product packages, phone numbers, email addresses, and famous works of art. When I tried this on my Kindle Fire it had trouble with my business card but the Fire Phone, perhaps due to a much better camera had no issue and immediately read it. It's quite impressive when it does work because it's fast, like barcode scanner fast. It has things it can't do, for example it doesn't seem to like book spines but covers are fine. Overall though it seems like if Amazon sells the product and the package is identifiable it will get it. I really liked this feature. It's perhaps the killer app if this phone has one. It's nothing like other apps I've tried that do the same thing, it's very fast, can even do multiple identifications at the same time, is very accurate and works on a lot of things. Another nifty trick that you can enable (but is still considered beta) is translation between English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish. I'm not much of a speaker of these languages but it seemed accurate snapping photos of wikipedia articles in other languages. You can also use this to simply copy visual text to the clipboard. In addition to visual things it can also listen for music, TV shows and movies and this also works really well but it also similar to plenty of competitors. The whole one button access is what makes this package so cool. I'd probably never use this if I had to open an app every time.
Perhaps the last thing is to note that the battery life with Dynamic Perspective on doesn't seem too good. I think the visual processing is fairly taxing as I was losing about 8% an hour. Turning it off it was closer to 1%-3% per hour.
So overall, if I had bought this with a two year or paid $650 contract I'd have returned it. Phones are too expensive as is and this while doing some neat things it needs a lot more software polish to earn it's price tag and also AT&T sucks and nobody should be shackled to it. However, at $200 (or $100 depending on how you look at a free Prime sub) it's quite appealing. The software has it's quirks and feels early but that'll hopefully be ironed out in the future (Amazon is planning another update for early 2015). In its current state it's mighty usable and mighty powerful for the price of some Android throw away you'd find in Walmart. It is worth noting that I don't plan to replace my phone with it, I bought it as a development device and media player (I use a dumb phone because data plans are expensive). But that's fine because it crushes an iPod in every department at the asking price. If you are fine with your phone I don't think I'd recommend changing to this but as a tech novelty, dev device, media player, cheap first phone or inexpensive replacement for a broken one, yeah it's totally worth it.
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