Is Amazon's Fire phone a game changer?

Every now and then, some company launches a device that’s bound to revolutionize the market, and, next thing you know, everyone else wants to make products similar to it - or at least to steal some of its features.
Yesterday, Amazon announced its first smartphone (simply called the Fire phone), and we were wondering if it could be considered a game changer. As you may know, one of the novelties that the handset offers is Firefly - Amazon’s new software-based service that uses the phone’s rear camera to recognize an impressive number of items (more than 100 million). After Firefly recognizes an item, it provides info about it, and allows you to instantly buy it. Having an Amazon Fire phone in your pocket means that you always have a pretty powerful shopping machine at your fingertips (which, let’s face it, isn’t necessarily a good thing for your bank account).

Shopping

capabilities aside, the Fire phone comes with a "dynamic perspective" 3D interface, which is years ahead of the 3D smartphone UIs we’ve seen until now. Amazon actually spent about 4 years developing the technology for this. The new interface doesn’t provide just visual treats, it also enables gesture-based commands (for example, you can tilt the phone to scroll through web pages).

Another thing that the Fire phone has is Mayday, Amazon’s free, live, on-device video support that almost instantly helps you use the handset at its full potential. You can see all the other new features of the Amazon Fire phone in this post.

The handset can already be pre-ordered, and will be launched on July 25. It’s available exclusively on AT&T, for $199.99 (32GB) or $299.99 (64GB) on contract. But you’re not paying just for the phone itself, as Amazon is throwing in a one-year Amazon Prime subscription, which normally costs $99.99.