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Moving On From Fire Phone Turmoil, Amazon Plans New Android Smartphones: Report (bit.ly)
Reader joshtops writes: Amazon plans to have another go at selling its own branded smartphones, according to a new report. The ecommerce giant, which killed off its Fire Phone in 2015, is working on a new lineup of smartphones branded as 'Ice', the report said, citing unnamed sources. Unlike the Fire Phone -- for which Amazon focused largely on the US and a couple of other western markets -- the company is eyeing emerging regions like India for selling its new phones. Amazon's upcoming smartphones run the latest version of Google's Android operating system with Google Mobile Services (GMS) such as Gmail and Google Play, the people said. Incorporating Google Mobile Services in its devices is a major change in strategy for Amazon, which currently offers a range of Android tablets without Google apps on them. The smartphones are being referred to as 'Ice' internally, in what could be a move to distance itself from the disastrous Fire Phone brand, though it's not clear if Amazon will eventually bring the devices under the Ice name. A source cited in the story said the phones will ship with Alexa, Amazon's AI assistant.
They should've left the "fire" name to Samsung
The Fire Phone failed because it was overpriced, and it didn't support Google apps. If Amazon could make cheaper phones and offer latest Android version with Google Mobile Services, that might be enough for it to make a dent on the market.
I'm guessing Chomecast will still be blocked somehow.
Fire tablets are fairly decent, however they have one major drawback. The lack of the Google play store for regular apps makes the tablets second tier for actual use. If Amazon would get the Google app store on their fire tablets they could easily become the dominant android tablet on the market.
Maybe after this fails they will try something that 'rocks' like... rock
And when that fails we can all call it 'brick'
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
But how many weird scripts are there in the region?
How many languages are there in India and immediate neighbors that we've never heard of?
For an example there's Tamil script and language, which makes me think of Thai script - only because Thai script is different from other scripts (Thailand is far off, but so is Tamil area itself compared to other India's regions). Both are obviously different from what I will call the Sanskrit-like script : this one is the one where letters are jointed at the top - now I am 99% sure there must be several ones like that, but this description should do the job ; I am talking about what I think is the well known "Indian" script.
There will forever be an unknowable to me number of cultures, languages, regionalisms in India (e.g., in other countries : I will never know about every Chinese language, or about every German dialect) though this is balanced by nation building. (e.g., there must be a number of Chinese who learned Mandarin as a second or first language and are able to understand what's said in the news or in some official texts)
In other areas of the Earth you have similar things going : Georgian script, Armenian script. Europe has pretty mild variations of Latin script (such as Danish, French, Norwegian, other languages where "ij" might be a letter) and this makes a QWERTY US keyboard a bit of a problem already. Albeit you might use one line on the bottom of a touchscreen as a "touch bar" for accented and other letters.
I hate to be the guy that defends touch keyboards :) as I would otherwise advocate for real keyboards.
On laptops, you might standardize the keyboard a little bit (as in be able to buy a replacement keyboard and stick it on a laptop) and then have different printed letters - you might even have room for both Latin labels and non Latin labels. Even there we could make do with better standardization of keyboards i.e. imagine you can use a keyboard meant for an Acer laptop on a Dell laptop.
On phones it's harder. Or maybe we could go back to having a 12-key numpad, on which arbitrary input methods may be implemented.
The restriction to Amazon's own store. They did it wrong....
The Fire phone was actually pretty nice. I later got one when they were discontinued to use as a tablet. But the issue is that they locked you into the Amazon store, and made it a hassle to use Google Play and buy standard apps. BAD!!!!
What Amazon needs to do, is include both stores, but incentivize using the Amazon store.
How would I do that? I would release my next phone in conjunction with Amazon Coin. Purchase of a new Amazon phone would include x number of Amazon coin. Amazon coin can be used on Amazon services, and be converted to Amazon gift cards.
Then explain that the purchase of apps thru Amazon's store will earn you a percentage of Amazon coin. Buy enough apps, and you can pay for your prime membership, Audible membership, purchase movie rentals....and more.
Let the user decide. But motivate the user.....don't be a !@#$ Apple.
I had a Kindle Fire HD that went into brick mode a few years ago. Despite numerous attempts with Amazon tech support, Internet research, and all sorts of recovery procedures involving a "factory cable" to get into fast boot mode, it remains a brick to this day. It starts up OK, but when it gets to the unlock screen, it freezes after the swipe, leaving no keypad and thus no way to enter an unlock code. I have found others with the same problem, but not a single one seems to have a solution.
When Amazon elected to customize Android, they acquired the blame for any problems that vanilla Android does not have. IMHO, they have failed in this endeavor, on various devices in various ways. There are many reliable Android implementations out there, but I doubt any of them are from Amazon.
I'm actually very happy with my Kindle Fire, though!
...of Ice and Fire. It'll go like this: They'll release it to rave reviews but as they mature they'll kill off all your favourite features. They'll also never finish them.
Resistance is futile. Reactance buggers it up.
amazon's android powered kindle book reader it is going to suck!
i bought amazon's android powered kindle and it sucked so bad i gave it away and just bought a samsung tablet and installed the kindle app, i rather kindle be just an app on a tablet than what amazon has done and totally taken control of the device's software
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