Amazon seems to have finally extinguished the long suffering Fire Phone with the mobile no longer listed as available on the online department store and several sources suggesting it won’t be coming back.
Also See: Amazon Fire Phone From Just £99 For Limited Time
It had the added gimmick of active 3D on a fairly generous 4.7” display with reasonable 13-megapixel main camera. It also offered access to a number of Amazon exclusives including Amazon Prime, a clever media and product recognition and scanning app Fire Fly was a saving grace and 24 hours live help service was available through May Day.
Its dependence on Amazon’s own Fire OS 4.6.1 (a custom of the now stale Android 4.4 KitKat) also it meant it lacked a decent selection of software in its app store and much-loved Google apps including YouTube and Maps were unavailable.
Despite the promise and good intentions, the Fire smartphone was a non-starter from the get go and did little to ignite market excitement and cost Amazon more than it made them, with the mobile division cut in number after this was realised and the company’s perseverance with the product was in the end futile.
Also See: Amazon Stands By Poor Selling Fire Phone
Try to find the Fire Phone on Amazon website now and you’ll find a message informing it’s “Currently unavailable” and “We don’t know when or if this item will be back in stock”. It’s both been suggested this is because existing supplies have been dwindled down and won’t be replenished, and also that Amazon have just pulled the product.
Will Amazon rethink its approach to the mobile market, or just go back to focusing its tech efforts on its Kindle e-reader range and the Prime service – two areas in which it still seems to be doing reasonably well.