Fire Phone turns up the heat in the market

Amazon has made its first venture into the smartphone market with the Fire Phone, and despite all the talk of a fully-fledged 3D display, much of the talk was on the phone’s Prime subscription service.

The service turns your phone into a powerful tool that recognises book covers, CDs, DVDs, songs, movies, grocery items, phone numbers and websites and pulls them into the phone so you can take action.

For Amazon, the major benefit of this is that it takes price comparison shopping to a new level, because any item you see while walking down the aisle of a shop can get an instant price check. Amazon says the phone can recognise more than a hundred million items. And if you link your credit card information to the service, you can make a purchase with a couple of taps.

But more than that, by releasing these tools to developers, Amazon has made what could be a major contribution to what a smartphone can do.

Ernest Doku, mobiles expert at uSwitch.com, said:

“Amazon’s killer blow lies in its deep connection to the Prime subscription service. The Fire Phone is rather a gateway into its millions of books, movies and music on-demand, making the device key to a very appealing package.”

One of the biggest advantages for users of the a 4.7 inch screen Fire Phone will be the unlimited photo storage using the Amazon Cloud. This means no limits on the number of photos you can take with the device’s 13 mega pixel camera. This is also available for free.

Although no release date has yet been confirmed for the UK, the Fire Phone goes on sale in the US on July 25.