My Fire phone experience lasted about 36-48 hours
It just screams, "buy me!" |
When prices dropped to 99 cents about a month or so ago, I was drooling. Alas, my two year contract wasn't up.
Since then, my poor refurbished 8 gig HTC One X was on life support. During the day I would have to plug it in at my desk to keep it charged. I deleted lots of pictures to give it room. I installed a lot of apps. How did I ever function at less than 8 gigs? When I got it, that was great!
I had it marked on my calendar. October 23. I can upgrade on October 23.
Thursday I was all pumped to order my Fire phone with its Mayday button (I should have tried it), Firefly technology (whatever that actually does for you - my computer, TV and satellite radio tell me what I'm watching and listening to already), and dynamic perspective (which some reviews claimed to cause motion sickness).
I can sideload Google apps I told myself. I can live without them, maybe, I tried to convince myself.
I couldn't wait to finish my work day to play with my phone. AT&T had made it so easy to transfer contacts. The easiest move ever, or so I thought.
Here it is Saturday night, and I plan on calling Customer Care before I go to church in the morning and take advantage of the 14 day buyer's remorse clause in my contract.
I promise the reviews were not this bad when I started seriously considering buying it. |
I want to chunk the stupid phone at something.
Why? Well, I'll share...
- The screens freeze a lot. In middle of doing normal things. Turn off the screen. Turn it back on. Start all over of finding what you were trying to do.
- You cannot delete multiple people out of the contact lists. One app did supposedly, but everyone I follow on Twitter shows up when I scroll thru to find someone to call.
- Deleting 2000 people one at a time is necessary for above prob because the book is so huge it won't download to my car's Bluetooth to be able to hands free call. I practically fell asleep on the couch after the repetitive action of deleting out the extras of A-K.
- Every time you get in the car it starts beeping when it connects to Bluetooth. Once is fine to know your connected, but the random beeps? What's all that for?
- There's no easy way to pin apps for easy access that I figured out off the bat. Or to rearrange to put them somewhere you can find them quicker.
- There are too many steps to check to see if you have notifications if you turn the sound off. I can't handle the thing beeping all the time, but I don't want to go through numerous steps for visual notification.
- While technically an Android, Amazon has it's own app store, and they do not have all the apps.
- It times out about half the time when looking up a web page. Especially when looking for apps you can't get in the Amazon store.
- You are supposed to be able to sideload Google apps not in the Amazon app store. You know, Gmail, YouTube, Google Maps. Those things I use often. I haven't been successful in doing anything without being routed through the Google Play store. The Fire doesn't like the store and store won't recognize the phone.
- Instagram won't recognize my Twitter account even after changing my Twitter password.
- I don't need to see Candy Crush recommendations as I scroll across most used apps because it's consumer focused with recommendations under every icon. Buy this, buy that, buy all Amazon. STOP IT!
- I like the Firefly feature in theory, but it's not necessary. I didn't actually use it to recognize anything.
- The dynamic perspective is cool. Tilt this way, tilt that. Swivel your wrist. But that gets old quick.
- It's taking some getting used to trying to swipe from bottom to top instead of hitting a back button.
- I still haven't figured out the purpose of 5 forward facing cameras, but you can do panoramic shots. I didn't take a panoramic of myself or a room of my house... It takes better pictures than my old phone.
I'm not willing to waste any more time on it. I want my Google apps and easier ways to find my apps and get my notifications. I'm not adaptable this time. And I usually like figuring out new electronics.
The worst part? Amazon is going to soon figure out that I returned my phone and they are going to revoke my Amazon Prime Membership!
I've only used it once to order a cover for the phone. And now, when it arrives tomorrow, I'm going to have to send the stupid cover back too!
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