Fire Phone Sale! - $229 12/8

[Kenmitch]

Wound up buying one for a backup phone. The prime makes it worth it to me at least.

Figured wtf and ordered a Fire TV to go along with it as downstairs TV is a dumb TV. They had a $40 off prime with purchase so opted for it also. Figure for $359 a fire phone plus tv and 2 years of prime is a decent deal.

 

[Zaap]

Damn I missed that part in the description...:/ I need to stay with Verizon so no new phone for me.

Just curious... why not?

You could get any number of phones way better than the Fire at a cheap upgrade price on Verizon. Why not just do a normal upgrade?

It can't possibly be that you're doing one of those "clinging to 'unlimited'... on the most severely limited POS that negates even having data" things.

 

[Zaap]

I find Amazons app store to be better than WP honestly.

Not exactly setting the bar all that high.

 

[Midwayman]

720p makes sense around this size and lower, since you're not as likely to see the benefit from going to 1080p as you would on phones over 5 inches. I look at the iPhone 6 and Xperia Z3 Compact and don't see many reasons why they must step up to 1080p, even if it'd be nice to see that down the line. It'd hurt battery life and brightness without offering a practical improvement.

I hear yah, and 2 years ago I would have agreed. 720p is 'fine' at that size if its not pentile. On similar sized devices I noticed the difference though going to 1080p. small webpage text is more legible for sure. Performance with their SoC is great at 1080p. If they were using a 2012 SoC, I'd say 720p might have been appropriate. Its more like they save what $5-10 on a spec that is one of the major ones to pay attention to. Weird given they seem to give a lot of priority to the screen on their kindle fire line.

 

[lopri]

I checked it out at a store and I liked it with a few reservations. The phone is like a love child between the iPhone 5 and the Nexus 4, appearance-wise, and me being partial to glass (vs. plastic and metal), it felt great in hand. Great screen, and great speakers (real stereo). Fire OS is very responsive all around on this phone, with positives of iOS (fewer janks) and Android (fast scrolling). Carousel is still there, though, and I do not know why Amazon insists on that wasteful interface.

The phone got kind of warm while I played with it and battery dropped like any other phone would (perhaps a touch more), which was disappointing because I thought the omission of Google services might help in that aspect. Maybe all the sensors that are on to enable the 3D stuff is the culprit?

Its default browser Silk was Inexcusably slow. I hope there are alternatives.

 

[lopri]

Wound up buying one for a backup phone. The prime makes it worth it to me at least.

Figured wtf and ordered a Fire TV to go along with it as downstairs TV is a dumb TV. They had a $40 off prime with purchase so opted for it also. Figure for $359 a fire phone plus tv and 2 years of prime is a decent deal.

I am in a similar boat and depending on how I decide on Xperia Z Ultra I might follow suit. I am in a transition mode from the Nexus 4 and 5. The Fire phone looks and feels great and it is difficult to believe that it is the first phone made by anyone. Initially negative reviews were rightfully based on its price.

 

[Deeko]

Does it really get hot while gaming like people say or is that a myth?

I have to sign-up for Prime again so thinking about this instead as a backup phone.

The limit of my gaming is Fruit Ninja and Simpsons Tapped Out, but no, it doesn't get hot during those...maybe in more intensive stuff?

As for the screen resolution, yea, its really pretty good. At 4.7" I can barely tell the difference. If I hold the phone an inch away from my eye, sure I night notice, but not during regular usage. Its not appreciably worse than my One M8's 1080p 5" screen.

 

[lupi]

I just snagged one. Got the firetv + prime the other day for ~105. Turned that prime into a $76 gift card and just got the phone and prime for $135. My prime was up at end of year so that takes care of that, and the phone will be a replacement for the wifes lg l9. Primary reason is for a better camera and this seems to have much better than current nd while not the top tier it reviewed well.

App use isn't a concern as only the somewhat basic ones got used and they are all in the amazon store, plus I have a pretty large collection of free for the day apps. Also have bought most of my cds through amazon so have a decent online music library for their stream service too.

For me not having the pure google version not near top of list of needs with what the phone does have, and the smokin price

 

[Tom]

I just snagged one. Got the firetv + prime the other day for ~105. Turned that prime into a $76 gift card and just got the phone and prime for $135. My prime was up at end of year so that takes care of that, and the phone will be a replacement for the wifes lg l9. Primary reason is for a better camera and this seems to have much better than current nd while not the top tier it reviewed well.

App use isn't a concern as only the somewhat basic ones got used and they are all in the amazon store, plus I have a pretty large collection of free for the day apps. Also have bought most of my cds through amazon so have a decent online music library for their stream service too.

For me not having the pure google version not near top of list of needs with what the phone does have, and the smokin price

How did you turn Prime into a gift card ?

 

[Kenmitch]

How did you turn Prime into a gift card ?

I think you check the this item is a gift option for the prime and it'll allow you to convert it back into a gift card. At least in the past it's now it worked.

 

[Midwayman]

How did you turn Prime into a gift card ?

You buy the prime as a gift, send it to your email.
log out of amazon
open email and click "already a prime member" in it
It'll ask you to login again.
Then it offers you the money as a credit on your account.

If you just ordered the kindle fire/fire tv/fire phone you can then goto the order and tell it to apply the GC balance to that order.

Works for most of the Fire products, but not the fire USB stick I think.

 

[lupi]

That's pretty much what I didn other than I didn't have to log out of amazon at any time. Just selected the prime add on as a gift to my emauil then redeem it as I already have prime. In the end I spent about $240 for the fire tv, phone, and another year of prime.

 

[lopri]

Wow, Amazon now says "the offer extended to 12/3/2014". I thought they simply lowered the prices? What kind of bait-and-switch is this?

Anyway, it looks like there is not much time left if anyone wanted to jump on it.

 

[OBLAMA2009]

these companies need to learn that phones arent supposed to cost $600 in 2014. all these phones that come out overpriced will eventually have to be sold at a firesale price. i dont mind at all if motox is 500, nexus 6 is 650, they arent worth dat an its gist a matta a time 'fore they 300

 

[Tom]

You buy the prime as a gift, send it to your email.
log out of amazon
open email and click "already a prime member" in it
It'll ask you to login again.
Then it offers you the money as a credit on your account.

If you just ordered the kindle fire/fire tv/fire phone you can then goto the order and tell it to apply the GC balance to that order.

Works for most of the Fire products, but not the fire USB stick I think.

Do you actually have to be a paid Prime member for this to work ?

 

[Midwayman]

Do you actually have to be a paid Prime member for this to work ?

Not sure if it'll work with a trial membership. Slickdeals is where I found the details. Probably an answer to that in one of the fire TV threads.

 

[lopri]

The deal is dead. Amazon jacked up the price to $450 now. I ordered one for $200 when I saw that orange banner screaming about the "deal" ending, thinking I can always return it within two weeks if I do not like it.

Amazon should have launched the phone like this to begin with. Unlocked, $300~350, 1 year Prime membership would have made a positive buzz instead of the chill $650 and AT&T exclusive brought.

Now @$450, I don't think so.

 

[cronos]

Haha yup it's dead now. This is an odd thing to begin with, with all the gimmick features included with it, but ultimately the killer is the price (and the AT&T exclusivity - this is not 2007, Amazon, that kind of shenanigan won't work in 2014).

You are right, $300-$350 (even $400 may still be reasonable) and unlocked is how this phone should have been launched in the first place. Even at that price there's still going to be some haters that 'wouldn't want it even for free', but at least it would have some chance instead of dead as soon as it stepped out of the gate like this. Now let's just hope Amazon learned its lesson and we'll see what's coming up for Fire Phone 2.

 

[Kenmitch]

deal is back at $229 this time.

 

[cronos]

deal is back at $229 this time.

Yeah I updated the title earlier, just didn't bump the thread up. That's probably what I would be doing further as the price fluctuates.

 

[Midwayman]

Yeah I updated the title earlier, just didn't bump the thread up. That's probably what I would be doing further as the price fluctuates.

Missed a digit in the title. Got excited.

 

[Zaap]

$29 I'd buy one just to mess with it.

$229... meh. No.

 

[cronos]

Missed a digit in the time. Got excited.

wth. sorry about that. The '2' key on my keyboard sometimes got stuck

 

[lopri]

Mine arrived at home. We shall see.

Edit: Interestingly all the buttons except for the home button are at the top-left corner. I do not mind the locations of power and volume buttons, but its camera button is at a stupid location. Thankfully on-screen shutter can be used as well so there is no negative of the dedicated camera button.

 

[lopri]

I haven't had a quality time with mine yet but just from the glance the screen is the best LCD I have seen on a smartphone (minus the average PPI). Great colors, just-right white balance, very tight physical construction gives it AMOLED-like viewing angle. It is sorta like iPad 2's screen without blue tint. RGB stripes are horizontally aligned so that viewing angles are superior vertically. I think this is by design in order to accommodate tilt-to-scroll feature which works quite well. Auto brightness is somewhat too bright to my taste but not as aggressive as it is on some other phones I have. User-controlled brightness can go very low (dim) and get very bright as well.