Amazon never says die: The company is reportedly already developing a second iteration of its Fire Phone.
According to VentureBeat, the e-retail giant expects to release the next-gen smartphone in 201...
Amazon never says die: The company is reportedly already developing a second iteration of its Fire Phone.
According to VentureBeat, the e-retail giant expects to release the next-gen smartphone in 2016.
It appears Amazon has been planning another handset for months, but has “gone back to the drawing board” after watching its first attempt crash and burn, VentureBeat said.
Amazon did not immediately respond to PCMag’s request for comment. But the company said in October that it will continue developing new Fire Phone models, hoping they will catch on like the Kindle e-reader, which was initially panned.
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We are going to keep iterating software features to get it better and better,” Senior Vice President of Devices, David Limp, told Fortune. “Each release that we’re doing, we’re leaning. Beyond that, I leave it out there to see what people think.”
The company has been struggling to drum up interest in its 4.7-inch phone since its summertime launch; Amazon lost $170 million in the last quarter, and was left with an $83 million surplus in unsold phones. Even features like a 3D-esque parallax display and the “Firefly” identification software could not boost its sales.
Limp later blamed a too-high price tag; the AT&T exclusive launched at the standard $199 for the 32GB model and $299 for 64GB on contract, but was later dropped to 99 cents.
An off-contract, 32GB version is also available for $649; Amazon eventually lowered the price to $449, but couldn’t manage to drive more sales. Last month, the cost fell further to $199 for a fully unlocked Fire Phone, but it is currently listed at $449 again.
With 1,280-by-720 resolution, a 2.2GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, Adreno 330 GPU, and 2GB of RAM, the handset received a “good” rating of 3.5-out-of-five stars in PCMag’s review.
If you were one of the few who did purchase an Amazon Fire Phone, be on the lookout for a big update; you’ll find new features like translating text to and from different languages, and a new artwork-recognition tool that can identify 2,000 famous paintings.