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Amazon Announces 'Fire Phone'
Amazon has unveiled the Fire Phone. It runs a modified version of Android, and it will launch exclusively for AT&T's network. The screen is a 4.7" IPS LCD (they tested from 4.3" to 5.5", and decided 4.7" worked best for single-hand use), with an emphasis on brightness. It runs on a quad-core 2.2GHz processor with 2GB of RAM, and an Adreno 330 GPU. It has a rear-facing, 13-megapixel camera using an f/2.0 five-element lens with image stabilization. There's a dedicated physical button on the side of the phone that will turn it on and put it into camera mode when pressed. The phone comes with dual stereo speakers that produce virtual surround sound. Amazon wants the phone to be distinctive for its ability to provide video content, both from a hardware and software perspective.
The Fire Phone runs Mayday, Amazon's live tech support service for devices. They also demonstrated Firefly, software that recognizes physical objects using the phone's camera, as well as TV shows and songs it hears. It runs quickly, often identifying things in less than a second (and it pulls up an Amazon product listing, of course). It can even recognize art. Firefly has its own dedicated physical button on the phone, and Amazon is providing a Firefly SDK to third parties who want to develop with it. Another major feature of the Fire Phone is what Amazon calls "dynamic perspective." Using multiple front-facing cameras, the phone tracks the position of a user's head, and uses that to slightly adjust what's displayed on the screen so content is easier to see from the new angle. It allows for gesture control of the phone — for example, you can tilt the phone to scroll a web page or move your head slightly look around a 2-D stadium image when browsing for available seats. Putting your thumb on the screen acts like a mute button for the head tracking, so it isn't confused when you look up from the screen or turn your head to talk to somebody. It's an impressive piece of software, and they've made an SDK available for it.
The Fire Phone runs Mayday, Amazon's live tech support service for devices. They also demonstrated Firefly, software that recognizes physical objects using the phone's camera, as well as TV shows and songs it hears. It runs quickly, often identifying things in less than a second (and it pulls up an Amazon product listing, of course). It can even recognize art. Firefly has its own dedicated physical button on the phone, and Amazon is providing a Firefly SDK to third parties who want to develop with it. Another major feature of the Fire Phone is what Amazon calls "dynamic perspective." Using multiple front-facing cameras, the phone tracks the position of a user's head, and uses that to slightly adjust what's displayed on the screen so content is easier to see from the new angle. It allows for gesture control of the phone — for example, you can tilt the phone to scroll a web page or move your head slightly look around a 2-D stadium image when browsing for available seats. Putting your thumb on the screen acts like a mute button for the head tracking, so it isn't confused when you look up from the screen or turn your head to talk to somebody. It's an impressive piece of software, and they've made an SDK available for it.
...for any device that has batteries inside it. All you need is one faulty batch, and this is quickly confirmed as the phone that burns people's hands off.
It's sad that the only real chance for a nerd-friendly, hackable phone (Jolla is not open in some key respects) missed the boat.
Plus $5 Microsoft patent fees per phone?
According to AT&T's site, the phone will cost $199 with a two-year contract for a 32GB device and $299 for a 64GB device. The phone will cost $650 off-contract, which is common for high-end smartphones.
Can't wait for the phones to be available used. Well, yes, yes I can wait, especially until I hear whether there's going to be a uSD slot
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The web interface for almost every Amazon service is so abhorrent that I seriously doubt Amazon's ability to make a smooth phone experience for all of their offerings. And the quality outside of the interface is pretty scattershot. Do I really want to pay Amazon Prime for this weird hodgepodge of services (with variable quality) all under a single provider's thumb? And do I want to buy a new phone to do it? Absolutely not.
Seems like the answer to a question nobody was asking.
cite. Even if that's a misprint and that's the price without a contract, that is WAY too much money!
It is amazing how much phone you can get for $100 now - GPS, decently high-res screen, MicroSD slot. If you ask me the movement is towards off-contract phones that provide a decent value, and $749 phones are going the way of the $3500 PC.
My enthusiasm is dead not because of the tech, but because of all the handcuffs that come with today's devices.
This stupid Amazon phone, for instance, only works on the AT&T network. WTF? AT&T is probably the worst of the bunch. That alone disqualifies it for me. The bit about it spamming me with Amazon ads doesn't help. I don't need a phone that tries to sell me stuff.
Other Android phones aren't much better; they're closed-source and don't get updates for more than a few months after they're released. CyanogenMod may be a good alternative here, but you have to select your phone carefully here since only a few select phones have good CM support.
Apple phones are the epitome of lock-in. And Windows phones are, well, Windows phones.
What I want is a well-made Android phone that runs CyanogenMod, has an easily-replaced battery and SD card, and works on T-mobile (at least until they get consumed by some shitty company like Verizon).
I wasn't able to tell from TFS.
...the rest of their stuff?
If so, not only a "no thanks" but I would like to add a "I hope you die a flaming fiery death and nobody is stupid enough to buy you..."
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That shitty company will be Sprint, you're welcome.
http://www.theverge.com/2014/4/30/5669598/sprint-will-try-to-buy-tmobile-in-june-or-july
So much for being free of old-tech companies. I guess the "free to use" phone will have to come from Google.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
What's wrong with the Google Nexus as a nerd-friendly hackable phone?
This item will be released on July 25, 2014.
Is it a smartphone or a boat flare?
http://bgr.com/2014/06/16/spri...
When you cant win, ad hominem.
Inferno. Unfortunately the next product in line to take that brand name happens to be a line of refrigerators.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Estimated price is between $800 and $1150. For a phone with an 800x480 screen? Seriously?
What's wrong with the Google Nexus as a nerd-friendly hackable phone?
Lack of a card slot and battery door. Otherwise nothing.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
this is the first phone that I have seen that includes 802.11/ac. I wonder if any public hotspots uses ac or a.
What I want is a well-made Android phone that runs CyanogenMod, has an easily-replaced battery and SD card, and works on T-mobile (at least until they get consumed by some shitty company like Verizon).
How about a Galaxy S4? That's what I'm running. I have a Sprint-branded model running on Verizon MVNO prepaid (only carrier around here - sounds like it's different where you live). I got mine from Amazon, as it happens - looks like they have a T-Mobile model too.
Mine's running 4.4.2 CM milestone, fully encrypted. 64GB SanDisk SDHC (make sure you do an aligned format under Linux) w/ Incipio Dual Pro case. Battery pops out on demand. Make sure you get Odin for Windows if you intend to install custom ROM's.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Can't speak for the OP, but I won't touch any device made by Apple or Samsung.
Oh right, that's what I was thinking of.
Anyway, I can only hope the deal falls through for some reason. The state of telecom in this country is simply horrible, and another merger will only make it worse.
This thing should fail and fail hard.
AT&T only.
1280x720 resolution.
$649 or ridiculous contracts.
No external sd support.
Not real Android.
No Google Play store or Google apps.
Weakly specced.
Nonstop monitoring and control by Amazon.
It's going to sell like fucking hotcakes, isn't it?
Fuck you, Amazon. I'm not paying $750 for your spyware-ridden piece of garbage.
I'm surprised AOL doesn't have a link on their homepage for you to click on. Remember, 'clicking' means left mouse button and 'right-clicking' is the right mouse button.
Unless I am mistaken (and please point me to a reference if so, I can't find one), GNU/Linux can only run in a chroot environment on recent Google Nexus phones, on top of CyanogenMod. The N900 booted into the same desktop Linux environment one is used to from one's PC without almost no tweaking.
Furthermore, I assume that the Nexus talks to its cell modem through shared memory, whereas the Neo900 promised to separate the modem from the rest of the system for the sake of security.
The higher numbers are for without a contract. Dynamic perspective is Apple's current feature plus flagpole-sitting. Firefly is nice, it's their version of Delicious Library plus Shazam plus ABC, "It even tells you where to buy it!" Really? Guess where it's going to tell you to buy it... That one handed tilt feature will come in very handy while walking or being the passenger in a vehicle. Repurpose it as a speed reading app.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Thanks, I'll check it out. I'd like to just keep my HTC Sensation 4G, but it doesn't seem to be that well supported by CM.
Oh goodie. A phone that only a fraction of potential customers can buy. Yep. That makes sense.
Why not limit use of amazon.com to AT&T customers too?
A telecom that bends over for the NSA, and a CIA contractor have a cellphone for you.
Only absolute retards will buy it, instead of any number of well supported Android phones that developers and hackers play with daily...
... expensive. ... all the features are around buying things, which I use my phone for... basically never. ... why?
When shopping for phones I always look for one which runs a fork of Android, which is locked into Amazon services, which is tied to a phone provider and doesn't cost any less than a regular unencumbered phone.
Wait, the fact that it's a $200+ physical shopping app with monthly charges doesn't bother you?
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
Did you miss this line? "I don't need a phone that tries to sell me stuff."
Besides, you're not paying to be sold stuff, you're paying for a phone and the other functionality that comes with that. But the shopping stuff is an add-on that spoils the utility of the device IMO.
Still, I wonder how good the hardware is. If the phone is being subsidized by Amazon, and if CyanogenMod can make a new firmware for it (which doesn't have any shopping stuff or other crapware), then it might be worth it. Of course, Amazon probably wouldn't like that too much.
This phone strongly reminds me of the Motorola ROKR, a pre-iPhone device whose sole redeeming quality, vs. any other dumbphone of the time, was that it could play tracks you downloaded from iTunes and manually transferred to the phone over USB 1.0. It would only accept 100 songs and/or 1GB of files, whichever limit you hit first. It wouldn't play MP3's.
Amazon has released a phone that has nothing to distinguish itself from the competition other than the fact it is hog-tied to the Amazon ecosystem. It's does not have any particularly interesting features that could not be implemented in pure software, and the price is nothing to write home about either.
I don't see any reason why anybody would purchase this over the Moto G LTE, or any number of other smartphones that are available for a heckava lot less money. If you really don't mind being tied to a contract, there are better phones for less than the $200 they want.
Thank you Amazon for making it that much easier to browse items at my local Best Buy, and then purchase from amazon. I'm wondering how many stores will be willing to carry this if/when it becomes more widely available.
The Kindle Fire seems to have fans just like Apple. While not nearly coming close to Apple fans numbers they are just as set in their ways. It will sell to those fans. The media/books/apps they suck down from the Amazon store and the shopping they do with Prime it should do well enough to stick around as a niche product.
Sent from my TARDIS
Have you considered a Fairphone to meet your specifications, which among many other redeeming qualities prides itself on its repairability, which includes being able to root your own phone whenever you want? So you can install CyanogenMod, or perhaps Jolla's Sailfish OS (that can also run Droid apps). It has a *lot* going for it, especially its designer's goal of staying out of the scrap heap as long as possible. About the only downside is the one attribute they didn't prioritize by design is being the fastest phone with the latest technology; but you must also consider the upsides when doing your own research to see if this is a good phone for you.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06...
https://www.fairphone.com/
It uses a GSM SIM card, so it'll work on T-mobile worldwide as you require. I've held one and it's plenty classy in the hand.
You can't be ahead of the curve, if you're stuck in a loop.
No doubt whoever came up with the name "fire phone" will continue to enjoy a long and prosperous career at amazon long after typing "fire phone" into Google and clicking image search.
I haven't experienced it myself but when I see the Amazon Kindle Fire commercials where they demonstrate you can talk to a live Amazon person to help you use your tablet, my first thought was "that would be great for my parents", especially since it would lessen the number of calls I would get from them on how to do something with their technology device du jour.
You would think that something locked down like an iOS device wouldn't lend itself to needing this kind of tech support help, but in certain areas - especially phone calls - there's a certain level of resistance to technology complexity with the older crowd. It sounds like I'm being mean with regards to age but I have known several older people over the last few years who went out and bought an iPhone because it was the new shiny thing and then took it back because they couldn't figure out how to use it or didn't like how complicated it made things. As much as it makes perfect sense to you and I that the phone is a more generalized computing device nowadays and wanting to make a phone call is basically launching a program, the older set knows that you used to just open the fucking thing and start dialing.
I'm not sure if the Fire Phone will make all that better (in particular I can almost guarantee my parents in particular would fucking hate the 3D screen thing) but I do think perhaps there's an untapped market out there for people who want a less-smartphone. After all, isn't that basically what "locked down" Android tablets like the Kindle Fire and the Nook are? Google, Apple and Microsoft are all trying to outdo each other on technical whiz-bang, and this entry from Amazon doesn't seem to impress the Slashdot crowd at all. Maybe this one is for our parents?
Schnapple
These cameras on the front look creepy.
As I post, your comment is rated 0, and it does not deserve the low score. I hope mods will read my comment and agree.
Specs look in line with other phones to me. The Note 3, which ran me like $700 (no contract), is 2.3Ghz quad core and an Adreno 330. So this seems pretty similar.
Only thing I see is the screen rez, but that really isn't that big a deal. The ultra high rez for phones thing is a little silly. Once you get around 300PPI or so, which this is, there really isn't any visual detail to be gained. Pixels are too small to be perceptible. So it is spec wanking to go higher and higher on small displays.
Criticizing the lock-in is very valid, but the price and specs seem in line with the other stuff out there.
I hope this thing doesn't take off, or we'll have to test our apps on yet another device running a heavily polluted Android
While I understand some people want the SDHC slot and a spare battery many of us use and have used Nexus 4 and Nexus 5 phones with no problems. I handed my N4 down to my daughter when her old phone bit the dust and got an N5. My wife has the N5 and my son has the N4. None of us care that it doesn't take an SDHC card (we have no reason to use one) and the battery lasts more than all day for our usage pattern so it is all good. You may well use more battery and storage than we do and need those options. I'm not about to say your usage pattern is wrong; it isn't. But many folks are just fine with the Nexus phones as they are.
This is really all about their extra software. Why not just license it to phone mfgs?
What?
I've had that since 2013 on my Sony Xperia ZL.
And even before that on the Sony Xperia Arc.
And even before that on the Sony Xperia X10 since 2011.
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
Let's see.... either you pay $199 and get locked into an AT&T contract and then have to pay even more money to get your phone unlocked at the end of it, or you pay $349 and get a Nexus 5/6 and use it with any carrier you want. Oh and did I mention it also has access to the Play store?
Amazon doesn't seem like the type of company to negotiate exclusive (restrictive) deals like this. I'd bet that they decided to use a GSM radio in the phone, which will work around the world. Verizon and Sprint use a CDMA network that pretty much only exists in the US. Sometimes we tend to forget that the US only makes up 5% of the world's population.
I'm terribly disappointed that Apple doesn't offer the iPhone 5s in 4s screen size (less than 4 inches) because I can't use it easily with one hand, which I could on the iPhone 4. Same thing happens on other Android phones, you have to look for budget versions but then other components like camera or storage suffer. And here comes a phone with 4.7 inches screen? What are these guys smoking? Who the hell can operate such a monstrosity with one hand?
PS. Yes, I need it for fapping.
I stopped reading once I hit AT&T
don't use video when Roaming att will bill $15 + meg and no you can't unlock and use a local sim.
I ran into this issue since I'm on AT&T. Originally bought a Samsung Galaxy
S 5 and promptly returned it because it's currently not rootable. So then I bought an HTC One M8 when I found out there's manufacturer support for rooting. You can also wait for the Cyanogemod Official phone (looks pretty nice too)
I teach techie sorts of classes to older folks who are relatively savvy when it comes to technology. My students are mostly electronics or process control guys who are trying to pick up more skills on the computer side of things. These guys aren't dummies.
But smartphones are absolutely horrific to teach, because in the Android world, absolutely nothing works the same way across every device. No one has completely stock everything (not even a Nexus, which has Chrome as a default browser instead of the stock Android browser which is just called "Internet"). From a teaching standpoint, iOS is a step up, but in any given class half the people will have phones so old that they're stuck on some ancient revision that can't do the things the newer ones can: "I paid $400 for this thing. What do you mean I don't get a Siri?"
I wind up being more productive teaching people this stuff one on one, simply because everyone's device is different. Even in an All-Apple or an All-Samsung class. Older people in particular just don't have their heads wrapped around ideas like storing things online, or when the devices are or are not on the internet, or why they should turn their GPS, 802.11 or Bluetooth on or off.
One really nice thing about Kindle devices is that there is very little variability between them. The Fire HD and HDX tablets are practically identical from a software standpoint. Amazon's launcher definitely isn't MY favorite, but it's relatively streamlined and straightforward in a way that Android generally isn't. And Mayday - the ability to get a real human being to talk you through tech support needs - is absolutely wonderful. My Mom, who is so technologically inept that she's afraid of using the any TV that requires a remote control, can't live without her Fire HDX. If she gets confused by something, she knows she can use Mayday instead of having to go get my dad or to call me. I spent 10 minutes making sure my mom knew how to get to the Mayday button and on that day I was given freedom from a lot of random, weird mom questions.
This is not the smartphone for Slashdotters. This is the phone for their parents or grandparents so that they can have a moment's peace at family gatherings instead of spending the whole time explaining navigation software or transferring playlists.
I finally want a new kindle with a high-dpi e-ink display, everything else I could not give two fucks about.
Oh, looks like Geohot figured out how to root the AT&T and Verizon S5s. Guess he gets the $18k bounty!
You just load a rootkit or just go into developer mode if you want pure root: http://trendblog.net/how-to-ro...
As for the configuration, its hackable. Load the OS configuration you want.
Verizon and Sprint use a CDMA network that pretty much only exists in the US
Meet Japan, the 51st state...
Interesting post. Basically, this Amazon smartphone sounds like it could be a niche product for older folks/neophytes, or those that want to primarily use the Amazon ecosystem.
My issue with the parents angle is that most tech neophytes don't have much interest in whizbang 3D UI features, esp. if it can't be permanently turned off (not sure if this version of the device will allow this or not.)
Chinese phones work on unlocked GSM and work fine on AT&T, TMobile, or all the various cheap monthly plan services.
That's fine for voice, but data is painful unless a phone can use the same UMTS or LTE frequency as AT&T or T-Mobile. And no, not "all the various cheap monthly plan services" work with "unlocked GSM". Sprint MVNOs in particular work with Sprint-blessed devices because Sprint uses some variant of CDMA2000 and will probably continue to do so until VoLTE matures. Besides, I get the impression that the only carrier that works in Charliemopps's neck of the woods is Verizon, another CDMA2000 carrier. Am I right?
Yes, it is locked to the Amazon ecosystem. There is no access to Google Play, or anything else.
No access to Google Play I can understand. But if "anything else" is true, it'd be a departure from Amazon's previous Kindle Fire tablets that have one checkbox to allow installation of applications from unknown sources and another checkbox to allow installation of applications through a USB connection to a computer running Android Debug Bridge.
What's wrong with the Google Nexus as a nerd-friendly hackable phone?
Mostly nothing - except for the Nexus One, which got orphaned at gingerbread after 18 months (vaguely understandable, since it was underpowered) and the Galaxy Nexus, which got orphaned at about 2 years (which stinks, because it still has plenty of power).
I'm on the Nexus 4, hoping it doesn't meet a similar fate. This thing has plenty of life left in it, and if Google/LG went with components for which drivers become unavaliable at the next major Android update, I'm giving up...
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
As far as I can tell, the advantage of the Fire Phone over Android phones with Google Play is that the Fire Phone lets U.S. customers who already subscribe to Amazon Prime shipping watch movies without having to pay extra for Netflix or an iPod touch or iPhone.
Bezos' Walled Flea Market with Free Spyware
My enthusiasm is dead not because of the tech, but because of all the handcuffs that come with today's devices.
This stupid Amazon phone, for instance, only works on the AT&T network. WTF? AT&T is probably the worst of the bunch. That alone disqualifies it for me. The bit about it spamming me with Amazon ads doesn't help. I don't need a phone that tries to sell me stuff.
Other Android phones aren't much better; they're closed-source and don't get updates for more than a few months after they're released. CyanogenMod may be a good alternative here, but you have to select your phone carefully here since only a few select phones have good CM support.
Apple phones are the epitome of lock-in. And Windows phones are, well, Windows phones.
What I want is a well-made Android phone that runs CyanogenMod, has an easily-replaced battery and SD card, and works on T-mobile (at least until they get consumed by some shitty company like Verizon).
There isn't anything stopping you from loading up linux on your phone bro. Not sure how you got modded +5.
"What I want is a well-made Android phone that runs CyanogenMod, has an easily-replaced battery and SD card, and works on T-mobile (at least until they get consumed by some shitty company like Verizon)."
Here is your problem. You represent ~0.0001% of the mobile phone market. Sorry, the economics aren't there to satisfy your needs.
I'm a geek, too, and I just want a phone that can browse and make phone calls. I don't want to sit around writing code for my phone. I just want it to work. Like most other people.
They have patented the one-click photo taking with that button and everybody else now has to use at least 2 clicks to take a picture.
Its very easy to tell that this will be a horrible experience because they choose to launch it exclusively with ATT. Thats like deciding buying a Ferrari and switching out the engine for one from ford pinto.
My enthusiasm is dead not because of the tech, but because of all the handcuffs that come with today's devices.
That's because people just want a phone that also has the ability to browse the web and run applications. If you are one of the few that want a phone without such "handcuffs" to be able to use it for other things then go with a Nexus phone.
Apple phones are the epitome of lock-in.
You aren't "locked in", don't be ridiculous. That is just the excuse of lazy people, if you want to change there is nothing stopping you from changing though oddly enough it's often geeks complaining that they are "locked in" so what exactly is it that you are having so much trouble that stops you from being able to change? What is keeping you "locked in"?
Yeah, it could be that, but it's actually $650 off-contract.
Required reading for internet skeptics
>I'm a geek, too, and I just want a phone that can browse and make phone calls.
Yeah, that'd be nice too, but (stock) Android is so unreliable it can't even do that very well. Almost every time I load the web browser on my phone, it crashes. On the second or third try, it'll work for a while. For many other tasks, it just hangs for 10-20 seconds with a blank screen before proceeding.
The whole reason I want an open-source phone is so I can remove all the crapware that the regular vendor-built Android software stack contains, and which is causing all these problems, not just so I can fiddle with it pointlessly. It's the same reason my wife's laptop runs Linux Mint: it "just works" and rarely has any kinds of problems, unlike Windows which it used to run.
Here is your problem. You represent ~0.0001% of the mobile phone market. Sorry, the economics aren't there to satisfy your needs.
Nevertheless, Samsung's new Z phone is based on Tizen, the spiritual successor to Meego, with plenty more to come.
Maybe the market isn't as committed to lockin as you think.
Check this out - https://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20140618231436-3892043-amazon-violated-its-fundamental-business-model-with-its-new-fire-phone-will-it-succeed
What's wrong with the Google Nexus as a nerd-friendly hackable phone?Lack of a card slot and battery door. Otherwise nothing.
While I understand some people want the SDHC slot and a spare battery many of us use and have used Nexus 4 and Nexus 5 phones with no problems.
Way to completely fail to follow the conversation there, coward. I have an N4 and I even have a N7-2013 and the lack of a card slot is stupid and annoying in both cases. But then, I'm a nerd who hacks his Android devices. The lack of a card slot is unacceptable.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I'm reminded how Apple used to obfuscate their systems specifications back in the 1990s. This photography blog did a quick comparisons of the imaging/camera capabilities of the newly announced Fire versus the iphone (I assume 5S). http://digitalimagehut.com/2014/06/18/amazon-fire-smartphone-review/
As poor Nikon and Canon fade into the sunset because nobody is buying point-and-click cameras anymore, the smartphone market continues to grow. The smartphones today can compete with digital camera made just 10 years ago. What's particularly striking about the Fire is how they've upped the imaging capabilities above the iphone (which was always ahead of of the Samsung/LG stuff). Who needs a point-and-click camera anymore?
I believe it is now safe to consider, with the exception of the very high end, digital cameras are now obsolete.
I wish Ebay would develop a similar product. I like to shop on Ebay and find Amazon a bit strange.
You can unlock the bootloader on a Nexus device and install whatever you want. The fact that GNU/Linux has failed to keep up with the times is irrelevant to how hackable the device is. There are alternative OS's out there that run on mobile - such as Firefox OS (which even supports the Nexus S and Galaxy Nexus).
Android devices are fragmenting the market and likewise making "one more" is just returning wireless to the status quo it was pre-smartphones, where everyone needs to throw away the device every two years and be handcuffed by 2+ year contracts to pay them off, accepting more expensive wireless plans to boot.
The perfect device to me would be one that I can install any ARM OS on (Android, straight linux/freebsd, windows, iOS, etc), have replaceable batteries, easily remove SIM and SD card (which I mean micro/nano sized that have UHS-1 speed) and have decent camera optics. The best optics right now are in the Apple devices, but even that is pretty pathetic because the sensors are so small. IPS display is desirable but I'm more concerned about having a device I can use, not one that is hamstrung with low amounts of RAM and CPU power because of the need of the device to be stupidly thin.
Try out the phones image recognition system, aim it at a politician, but it doesn't tell you how much it costs to buy the politician. So the phone needs more work.
Take Nobody's Word For It.
I don't know about Nexus phones specifically, but unless the hardware is locked down you should be able to put Android in a chroot jail instead, with a proper GNU/Linux environment on the outside. Then in the Android world you can run a VNC client app, or ssh in a terminal app (with optional X server app), to break back out.
I got it working on my N900 substitute, a $200 "Samsung Galaxy S Relay 4G" (SGH-T699), which has a great 5 row slide out keyboard to make up for its otherwise unremarkable (but still better than N900) hardware. There are still a lot of rough edges to smooth out--currently to direct audio to the headphone port I use a shell script with 9 amixer commands, for example--but I get the sense that this is just a matter of putting in more time tinkering.
Am I the only one to think that "fire phone" seems to be another name for "burner phone"?
We're talking about the Neo900 in this thread, which the guys making it estimate will cost between 500 to 700 EUR for the motherboard and another 100 to 150 EUR for a complete device. Convert that to USD and the get the figures Ralph Wiggum mentions. It's a good idea to read a thread before replying to it if you don't want to look like a retard.
Yeah, I'd like to have one with the same features, but I wouldn't mind if it's twice as thick as an iPhone, if that means I get better performance and more battery life. And being able to install any OS is important too; then there would be community-supported OSes available.
My enthusiasm is dead not because of the tech, but because of all the handcuffs that come with today's devices.
This stupid Amazon phone, for instance, only works on the AT&T network. WTF? AT&T is probably the worst of the bunch. That alone disqualifies it for me. The bit about it spamming me with Amazon ads doesn't help. I don't need a phone that tries to sell me stuff.
Other Android phones aren't much better; they're closed-source and don't get updates for more than a few months after they're released. CyanogenMod may be a good alternative here, but you have to select your phone carefully here since only a few select phones have good CM support.
Apple phones are the epitome of lock-in. And Windows phones are, well, Windows phones.
What I want is a well-made Android phone that runs CyanogenMod, has an easily-replaced battery and SD card, and works on T-mobile (at least until they get consumed by some shitty company like Verizon).
Sounds like you need to Look into the One Plus. CynogenMod is the default OS and it is not locked into a carrier. It does not work with CDMA however, so yeah, you are still kind of limited.
Would Buy This 'Phone'...
Oh, wait, I forget, I live in America which has been renamed 'Merica' by the lazy and obese slobs that inhabit its shores. AmazSlime realizes the dumbing down is complete. The consumer has no idea, interest or comprehension about the demise of their privacy and the resultant damage that is rapidly approaching.
Sorry, Merica, you are getting your just desserts. No pity from me.
i wanna flash cm onto my s4, but i haven't because i don't wanna lose the gesture and hover features. are those implemented on cm?
Wealth is the gift that keeps on giving.
Lack of microsd is simply unacceptable, imo. non-replaceable battery i might put up with. this is the main reason i bought an s4 and not an n5.
Wealth is the gift that keeps on giving.
So you're more interested in buzzwords that freedom.
That's ok, you are mainstream.
I'm weird and I know it.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Is that supposed to be a reply to CRCulver's post?
He's lost enthusiasm for free (libre) phones, not handcuffed android thingies.
Watch this Heartland Institute video