Amazon Fire Phone: Battery Life

This is an area of the Fire Phone that performs above expectations, especially when the 2,400mAh cell is smaller than many of the top-end handsets on the market. After ten hours of playing, prodding and testing our life force had only diminished by half, although that did not include video playback or music streaming.

We had no problem with picking the phone up and rocking it the next morning too. For Amazon’s part, it promises 285 hours of standby time, 22 hours of talktime and 65 hours of music playback.

It appears the Fire OS may be a little less power hungry than some of the custom UIs on the market, while the presence of a 720p display rather than 1080p also goes a long way towards keeping the battery going.

Amazon Fire Phone: Call and Sound Quality

The Amazon Fire Phone is available exclusively on the AT&T network in the United States right now, so much will depend on how good the service is in your locale. In my ‘hood, AT&T is second to Verizon, but I didn’t experience any dropped calls.

When Skype calling, the recipient came through loud and clear, while a chat over the Atlantic with a family member brought solid results over Wi-Fi and 4G. The sound quality that emits from the top loaded speaker isn’t great by any stretch of the imagination, but its serviceable if you’re ever without headphones. Like most phones, the presence of bass is minimal, while the output can be quite tinny.

Related: Best Headphones

Should I buy the Amazon Fire Phone?

For makers of mobile devices and mobile operating systems, the trick is to get users locked into that content ecosystem after they’ve purchased the device. Apple has perfected it with iTunes, iBooks and the App Store’s walled garden and, despite its inherently more open nature, Google isn’t far behind with the Play Store.

Amazon takes this to an entirely new level with the Fire Phone, to the point that if you’re shopping and content consumption habits do not revolve around Amazon.com Kindle, Prime Video, Amazon MP3, and you have no intentions of that becoming the case, it’s very difficult to recommend the Fire Phone. At times the device appears like a handheld personal shopping tool that just happens to have cellular capabilities.


We like the innovative user interface, the Dynamic Perspective gestures work very well and, once you’re become accustomed with the OS, life is a breeze. Amazon should be commended for thinking outside the box and what Amazon is trying to achieve has been executed very well.

However, it has to be said that this is an upper-mid-range phone with a very high-end price tag. If Amazon was offering this phone at a price that rivalled the Nexus 5 or the Moto G, then it might be a different story, but alas it is not.

Verdict

The Fire Phone isn’t a bad first effort from Amazon but there’s little for non-Amazon loyalists to justify the hefty price tag.

Next, read our best phones round-up or look at the iPhone 6 rumours

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