Amazon Shoots Down Rumors of Free Smartphone

[exfileme]

There will be no Amazon smartphone releases in 2013.

Amazon Shoots Down Rumors of Free Smartphone : Read more

 

[teh_chem]

I bought and used a KFHD 7" for a few months. It was a dreadful experience (usually a standard android user, but I wanted to try their tablet offering out of curiosity). Everything was buggy. Even their native home-built apps were buggy. The device was exceedingly slow at everything, and only got slower with use. Then using it felt like I was looking at a regular Android tablet by looking through a tiny straw, only getting access to a few things.

I do not like Amazon's OS. I get their reasoning for it, for funneling you into their ecosystem and to get you to buy their stuff. But their experience is crap. I was hoping for something more.

Couldn't fathom using a phone under similar circumstances; hopefully they work their stuff out first.

 

[DRosencraft]

I know that it was reported in the Wall Street Journal, which lends a tinge of credibility, and I know the default of companies is to deny they're working on something when they really are. However, it seems too far-fetched that Amazon would give away a phone for free with no financial attachment on the end-user. Buy a Kindle and get a phone, or something like that might make sense. And when I saw the original story I noted that they could potentially end up in a legal morass if they make a fairly high-end phone and give it away un-subsidized, free of charge.

 

[house70]

Deja vu, deja vu... why do I have this feeling?

Oh yeah, I read about this last week on every other tech website.
Nothing is really free, so it should not have come as a surprise.

 

[g00fysmiley]

it would make sense for them to do a cheap/free device because ntohign gets users like a fire sale, think of the amount of hp/palm WebOS tabs that flooded the market after they went on sale. if amazon wants to keep competing with thier app store. i knwo i for one use the amazon app store more than the google play store not because of lack of apps but often jailbreaking a device i can still use amazon appstore. liek withmy levono K1 its a little older tablet and had android 3.2, but rooting it to load 4.0 meant google play would not load on the device hence being stuck with one option. they keep allowing all devices and make a free-cheap device like they have with the kindle fire series and i think they will have a winner

 

[teh_chem]

it would make sense for them to do a cheap/free device because ntohign gets users like a fire sale, think of the amount of hp/palm WebOS tabs that flooded the market after they went on sale. if amazon wants to keep competing with thier app store. i knwo i for one use the amazon app store more than the google play store not because of lack of apps but often jailbreaking a device i can still use amazon appstore. liek withmy levono K1 its a little older tablet and had android 3.2, but rooting it to load 4.0 meant google play would not load on the device hence being stuck with one option. they keep allowing all devices and make a free-cheap device like they have with the kindle fire series and i think they will have a winner

Unfortunately for HP, the TouchPad fire sale was because the tablets were not selling, and HP announced they were discontinuing WebOS devices only 50 days after the touchpad went on sale and cutting their losses. Not really a positive decision.

Did you ever try to follow up with your K1 and other ROM's? That's such a weird thing to experience, surely someone in the mod community figured it out? Another option--a bit more laborious--is something I did when I had my KFHD; some apps I used I wanted from the GPlay store (vs. the amazon app store)--perhaps because I purchased a full version from GPlay, or because the app wasn't available in the amazon app store. So I had the app on my phone (or other android device), and with Astro File Manager I'd back up the .apk for the apps I wanted to xfer (this is an option in Astro), and then shared it with dropbox. I had dropbox side-loaded on the KFHD, and after that I could just install the GPlay app apk's on my KFHD. A bit of a process, but it allowed having the non-amazon app store apps available on my KFHD when I had it (got rid of it after a few months).

 

[g00fysmiley]

teh_chem the comparison to the WebOS tab was just to mean that they sold like hot cakes because of the low price not that it would fail, thank you for the adviice on the K1 though I had not tried side loading the apps as my phone a samsung galaxy nexus has no sd card, but the laoding through drop box or even my computer transfering files might work, thanks!