Before the Fire phone, Amazon's Jeff Bezos used a Samsung handset

Amazon last week announced the Fire phone, which will allow the company to enter the smartphone market - several years after it introduce its first Kindle Fire tablet. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos himself presented the Fire phone during its launch event, and it’s obvious that the company expects a lot from this device.

Not long after announcing the Fire phone, Jeff Bezos had a chat about it with The New York Times’ Farhad Manjoo, revealing that he’s been using the device as his own phone. Before that, the Amazon CEO used a “Samsung.” The model wasn’t specified, though we assume it had to be a flagship like the Galaxy S5, or Galaxy Note 3. Apparently, Bezos is already missing some of the Fire phone’s features when using other handsets. “When I switch back to another phone, I’m still reaching for the gestures that work so reliably on Fire phone, like autoscroll,” said Bezos.

According to the Amazon chief, the company’s first smartphone is not just different, but also useful (mainly to Amazon customers, of course). He doesn’t think that they're late to enter the smartphone market - on the contrary, he believes that “in the whole evolution of this, we’re still pretty early,” adding that “things change very rapidly in this area.”

Asked about the price of the Fire phone (starting at $199 on contract), Jeff Bezos said that this is justified, because “it’s a really premium phone” and they’ve “packed a lot of hardware, a lot of expensive materials” into it. Moreover, “it’s 32GB instead of 16GB”, and it comes with a one-year Amazon Prime subscription. You can read the full interview with Amazon’s CEO at the source link below.

Currently available only to pre-order, the Amazon Fire phone will ship starting July 25 (exclusively on AT&T).


source: Bits / The New York Times