
Amazon Fire Phone is now 99¢ with a 2-year contract - Jack_Ollender
http://www.amazon.com/Fire_Phone_13MP-Camera_32GB/dp/B00EOE0WKQ/ref=sr_1_1?s=wireless&ie=UTF8&qid=1410194761&sr=1-1&keywords=fire+phone
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kin
I think at this point we can say that Amazon gambled w/ this device and lost
the bet. This is simply not a device that consumers want. Lesson learned.

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jychang
It might be picked up as a budget device for customers who are willing to buy
dirt cheap devices that didn't sell well during its production run. I can
imagine the Fire phone joining products like the Canon EOS M in that category.

(The EOS M camera was panned by reviewers when it was released, for being
unusably slow. Sales were horrible, and the price dropped like a rock from
$899 to $250. However, Canon also released firmware updates that fixed a lot
of the speed issues, so some people are buying it now as a great budget
camera).

~~~
post_break
The EOS M was rejuvenated because hackers got Magic Lantern on the thing.

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jychang
Magic Lantern is pretty fun, but I bought it because it fits in my to-go bag
unlike my dSLR and it's ridiculously cheap for an APS-C camera.

It's by far the best mirrorless camera in its price category. You need to go
up to to almost twice the price before things get competitive.

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kenj0418
So about $600.99 then? What a bargain. The $449 price is cheaper than that.
(Assuming you are on AT&Ts more recent plans where they charge you $25 more
for having a subsidized, on-contract phone.)

~~~
achompas
No, it's $450.98. AT&T Next does not require down payment for a new phone,
since they amortize the phone's cost over two years.

For an iPhone 5S you pay $0 up-front and 24 monthly payments of $27.09. Of
course, $27.09 * 24 = $650.16, the unsubsidized phone price.

You can, of course, still buy phones on two-year contracts instead of paying
monthly. In that case you'd pay $199 for an iPhone 5S, in addition to a
(lower) contract hit.

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jobu
The problem is with a new 2-year contract on an AT&T Family Plan you end up
paying $15 - $25 more each month for the contract.

So for an iPhone 5S on a 2-year contract with a 10GB plan you pay $199 up
front and then $25/mo for two years with a grand total of $799 over two years.

AT&T's new pricing structure is a mess

~~~
achompas
Yeah, I think they've done this to encourage customers to use AT&T Next
instead of signing a 2-year contract. Purchasing a phone with AT&T Next, then
foregoing the upgrade, is exactly the same as the old-school 2-year contract.

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chevas
I imagine this is to offload some inventory before the iPhone 6 announcement.
My bet is Amazon will sell very few phones after tomorrow.

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celticninja
So this is a fire sale then.

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bengali3
1 month with AT&T is a deal breaker for me, so forget about 2 years!

Buy your way to unseat iOS $150 no commitment

features are a commodity now, providers are the thorn.

..it's your only hope..

~~~
MadManE
This is what keeps me from taking them up on this offer. I would absolutely
extend my T-mobile contract for 2 years to try this phone, but AT&T is a huge
dealbreaker.

Edit: spelling

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devindotcom
Dropped almost as fast as the HTC First/Facebook phone! (which was actually a
great phone, by the way)

~~~
dublinben
Even the Microsoft Kin didn't drop in price this quickly. That was an
unmitigated disaster, which sold less than 10,000 units.

~~~
RyJones
The Kin should have been called the Contractual Obligation Phone. Microsoft
had to give it to Verizon, but they were really late. Verizon had to take it,
but they didn't push it.

I went to a Verizon store when Kin shipped (Kin was developed by my old team,
so I wanted to see it) and I couldn't get a rep to pull one out of a box to
show it to me.

I know someone in MSR that ended up with a truckload of them; they're
reflashed and used for lots of little things. Kind of a neat second life.

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sremani
This one is a good example, any Android without the blessing of Google and
without Google Play would not sell. For the people, who were demanding MSFT to
ditch WP and do an Android fork, this is the case and point. If any one could
have pulled an Android Phone w/o Google Play it was Amazon and now we learn
that they too are incapable of pulling some miracles.

~~~
heydenberk
>> If any one could have pulled an Android Phone w/o Google Play it was Amazon

I don't agree with this assertion. Amazon doesn't have a stellar UX track
record.

~~~
sremani
The reason for giving Alpha status to Amazon is because they have a mildly
successful android tablet and an android app store the preceded the phone by
few years.

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ASneakyFox
It has all the same mistakes that their tablet had. Its an android device
that's not compatible with android apps. It provides less features than the
devices its competing with and offers no reason to buy it over a regular
android device.

I don't get how they're not seeing this aspect of it at all.

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skrebbel
Email me for a MacBook Pro for only $0.99! (plus a $100 per month espresso
beans subscription)

~~~
jrockway
Sounds good. If I didn't get coffee for free at work, I'd probably spend more
than $3.33 a day on it.

~~~
skrebbel
Just on the beans??

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Chromozon
The reviews on this phone are very bad- frequent freezes, slow UI, randomly
calling people, extremely limited number of apps, and lacking in basic
functionality. I can understand the $0.99 price tag.

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taksintik
Horrible initial pricing strategy with equally terrible subsidies. It's like
they positioned this product from penthouse to outhouse in less than 90 days.

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ChrisLTD
I would love to see some sales figures for the Fire Phone. I have yet to see
one in the wild here in NYC.

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Neff
Amazon doesn't release sales figures for devices, but a writer at The Guardian
tried to extrapolate sales figures based on traffic and ad impressions and
estimated about 35,000 devices in use [1].

[1]:[http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/aug/26/amazon-
fir...](http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/aug/26/amazon-fire-phone-
sales-data)

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api
The cheaper the mobile device, the more it likely spies on you.

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kentonh
How long until they use these in place of packing peanuts?

