Fire Phone: first impressions and tips
I’ve had my
Amazon Fire Phone (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)
since Thursday, which has given me an opportunity to use it over the weekend and at work.
I can say that the best is yet to come. ;)
This is a new and radically different device. Think of the people who bought the first automobiles, before there were purpose built roads. They had to bounce and rattle along over streets intended for entirely different vehicles. It wasn’t until people responded to the invention that it became completely indispensable.
At this point, the Fire Phone’s two breakthrough features (Firefly and Dynamic Perspective, which I call “dyper”) are like that.
I’m coming to the Fire Phone from a Galaxy S4…and I have an iPhone 5S that I use for work. The iPhone is new for me (the way Apple handled e-books left a bad taste in my mouth for their products), but I do have some experience with it.
I wouldn’t say I’m a power user of SmartPhones: not like I am with Kindles. However, I do know what I’m doing and I use them quite a bit.
At first, I found the Fire Phone’s interface less easy to use than my S4. After doing more research, playing around with it, and making a couple of calls to Mayday (the almost instant live online screen tech help…which is a huge plus for the FP over anything else), it’s growing on me.
It does all of the basics fine: e-mail, calendar, text.
The navigation is new. Without learning that, the phone can seem frustrating, like it takes a lot of steps to get anywhere.
Let’s talk this through.
The way I have the phone set, I turn it on by pushing a power button once…reasonable.
The lock screens look amazing! They have dyper…just by moving my head, I can see more of the image. For example, I have a neon sign up right now, like a tourist trap in the desert (it includes the date and time). By moving my head (even from probably half a meter away from the phone), I can see the streetlamps which are otherwise off the screen. I can see how many new e-mails I have, the signal strength and battery level.
To unlock it, I swipe up from the bottom…that’s an adjustment for me, I’m used to going side to side. However, as an ambidexter, I appreciate that it isn’t better for right or left handers. :)
I’ve put a password on mine.
Once it opens up, there is a Carousel, like there is an a Kindle Fire. It’s going to be easier for Kindle Fire users to adapt to this phone than other people.
At the bottom of the screen are four icons:
Phone
Messaging
Email
Silk Browser
Here’s the first thing you might not realize.
Swipe those four icons up, and you’ll be on the apps screen.
It will default to being the apps on your device, but you can switch it to the Cloud easily enough (it’s an obvious choice in your top left corner).
Okay, here’s are a few gestural things on this homescreen which aren’t intuitive.
In addition to swiping from the left or right side, you can just “flick” the phone.
Flick it where you are turning the phone with a rapid motion with the left side getting closer to you, and you reveal the main navigation. That has
APPS
GAMES
WEB
MUSIC
VIDEOS
PHOTOS
BOOKS
NEWSSTAND
AUDIOBOOKS
DOCS
SHOP
PRIME
Flick it back to remove that menu.
Generally, that left menu will be available in most places you are working, and will be the same.
Flick it the other way, with the right side getting closer to you, and you’ll reveal a context sensitive menu…one that varies depending on what you are doing.
ON the home screen, I get a weather report (which I could set to be in Celsius, my favorite…and which autodetected my location), and Google Now type cards. Right now, I’m seeing calendar events, but I may see an e-mail from people I designate, or texts. There is an ellipsis (“…”) at the bottom to go to the full calendar.
Flick left, flick right: two of the main gestures.
Three other big gestures:
Tip the phone to one side (either direction), and you’ll see a ribbon at the top with quick access to functions:
Airplane mode
Wi-Fi
Bluetooth
Flashlight
Sync
Settings
Mayday
Search
Brightness
How would you know what they were?
You peek.
Really, that’s what they call it.
Move your head to the side and look back at the phone, like you are trying to look behind the icons.
The captions magically appear.
You’ll use that a lot.
The last gesture I’ll mention is how to get back to what you were doing last.
The first couple of days, I really missed the Back button on my S4. Then, one of the Mayday reps told me that you can swipe up from the bottom of the screen. They didn’t describe it quite right: the thing is that you start off the edge of the screen at the bottom, at about the same level as the home button. Then swipe up on to the screen: that will take you back to the last function.
Before I go on, let me say that is seems to drink battery charge like a Chevrolet Suburban drinks gasoline! ;) Just while I’ve been writing this post, it went down four percent. I expect that will get better after I play with some settings.
In terms of the pre–installed apps, I recommend that you play with Clay Doodle and Monkey Buddy (although the latter might drive you crazy, if you are an adult). The first one is like Play-Doh, and takes advantage of the dyper. The second one is a virtual pet, like a Tamagotchi in concept. Since it can see where you head is, it responds to you nodding your head yes in approval, for example.
Believe it or not, the integration with Amazon could be better. My Prime music wasn’t available until I downloaded an app…that was weird. My biggest disappointment so far has been that gestural scrolling doesn’t work in the Kindle app! It only works in Silk on websites.
I was really looking forward to having an endless scroll in my Kindle books, where I could get to the next text by just moving my head or tilting the phone.
A Mayday rep told me that an update is coming soon which will include more functionality…and better interface with the Kindle app is one of the things we may see. Right now, you can get the X-Ray background data by flicking from the right…good to know, right? :)
I may do a full menu map at some point (that kind of thing might make a good short “book” for people to borrow through Kindle Unlimited), but let’s go through the settings at a high level:
Wi-Fi & Networks
Connect to Wi-Fi
Enable Airplane Mode
Pair Bluetooth Devices
Set up a Wi-Fi hotspot (only if that’s part of your data plan, I think)
Enable NFC (Near Field Communication)
Turn off cellular dta usage
See your cellular data usage
Change your mobile network operator
Display
Adjust screen brightness
Turn off automatic screen rotation
Hide (or show…the commands change based on current state) status bar
Change time to sleep
Share your screen via Miracast
Configure low motion settings (this will turn off some of the gestural stuff, which would be useful for those with unsteady hands or heads)
Sounds & Notifications
Change your ringtone
Manage notifications
Select ringtones for specific people
Select text message tones for specific people
Change volume levels (there are also physical volume buttons)
Change touch feedback settings (my first call to Mayday: how to turn off hepatic feedback, the vibrating you get when you touch a key…I just don’t like it, and it uses battery charge)
Applications & Parental Controls
Configure Amazon application settings
Manage applications
Prevent (or enable) non-Amazon app installation
Turn off product recommendations
Enable Parental Controls
Battery & Storage
View battery usage (the system is taking 50% of my usage right now)
View available storage
Free space on your phone (not how much you have…this one is designed to free up space)
Change USB connection type
Location Services
Configure Location Based Services for your applications
Enable Enhanced Location Services
Disable Find My Device (enabled by default)
Lock Screen
Select a lock screen scene (the default is that it changes every day)
Set a password or PIN (Personal Identification Number)
Change the automatic lock time
Turn off (or on) notifications on the lock screen
Keyboard
Change the keyboard language
Configure auto-correct and spell-checking
Manage advanced keyboard features
Edit your personal dictionary
Phone
Configure call waiting
Configure caller ID
Forward incoming calls
Edit Reply-with-Text messages
View your phone number
Set up voicemail
Contact your carrier
My Accounts
Deregister your phone
Manage e-mail accounts
Connect your social networks
Manage your Amazon account
Manage your Amazon payment method
Manage your Amazon Newsstand subscriptions
Manage your Send-to-Device email address
Device
Change the date and time
Disable auto backups
Change your language
Install system updates
Factory reset your phone
Get info about your Fire
Configure your emergency alerts
View your emergency alerts
Manage your SIM (Subscriber Identification Module) card PIN
Manage enterprise security features
Manage accessibility (it has nice magnifier features…I turned those on)
View Legal and Compliance Info
Voice
Configure voice settings (oh, it does take voice commands…hold down the home button, like accessing Siri. I have found that I have to say “Search the Web” to get it to do that…it doesn’t just guess that’s what you want if you say something for which it doesn’t have a command)
Change Text to Speech (TTS) language (it does have TTS for Kindle books…it comes with English and Spanish, but you can download quite a few others for no additional cost)
Help & Feedback
Get help from Mayday (there is a lifesaver for that on the quick access ribbon…remember, you can tip your phone quickly for that, or swipe down from the top. Use it to get the most out of your phone)
Browse online help
Contact Amazon technical support
Provide feedback
There, that gives you a pretty good idea of its capabilities.
Overall, I’m starting to like it. If you want everything to be easy, if you want it to be as good as the most popular other phones, you may not want to be an early adopter. You can download apps to do things it doesn’t do right now (in many cases), but a year from now, it will be much more capable…I suspect it will be a lot more capable before the holidays.
It’s certainly satisfactory…and the hardware (the four cameras that enable dyper) and Firefly (the real world recognition system) promise much greater things in the future, once people start designing for it. The killer apps are yet to come.
I think it’s a great first SmartPhone (which is where I think the market is), and an adequate transition phone (with amazing potential).
Hey, my Kindle app has an update available! That sort of thing is going to happen a lot…I won’t focus on the Fire Phone a lot in this blog (just as I haven’t done that with the Fire Phone), but it is a Kindle reading device, and I think it deserves some coverage here.
If you have any specific questions about it, or things to say, feel free to comment on this post.
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* I am linking to the same thing at the regular Amazon site, and at AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get. Shop ’til you help!
This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog. To support this or other blogs/organizations, buy Amazon Gift Cards from a link on the site, then use those to buy your items. There will be no cost to you, and a benefit to them.