Amazon is bringing its first smartphone to the UK on 30 September, announcing its release immediately before Apple’s much-anticipated iPhone 6 launch event.



The e-commerce giant hopes that its smartphone can challenge Apple, Samsung, Sony and HTC in the smartphone market, but its US launch has failed to generate solid sales, with data from research companies comScore and Chitika suggesting no more than 35,000 Fire phones have been sold.

Reviews of the device from the US were less than positive, with many citing gimmicky features, sluggish performance and poor design.

“We think the Fire Phone will be a great phone for Amazon customers, amazing for Prime customers, but it’s a very competitive phone and good for people who want a new phone in general,” Cameron Janes, Amazon’s director of the Fire phone, told the Guardian. “It’s amazing value with a bundled year of Amazon Prime giving access to 15,000 videos and 500,000 books, plus free unlimited photo cloud storage and customer support from the built-in MayDay feature.”

Dynamic perspective uses four front-facing cameras to track the position of the user’s head and simulate 3D. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian

The Fire phone uses Amazon’s version of the Android software, lacking Google’s apps and services and relying on Amazon’s app store, which has over 240,000 or fewer than a fifth of the 1.3m apps available through the Google Play store.

“We don’t focus on the total number of apps, it’s about having the right apps, the apps that customers really want,” said Janes. “Since we launched the Fire phone in the US, we’ve seen the volume of app submissions to the Amazon app store double.”

“We’re very focused on bringing more apps to the platform, and for the UK we’ve got apps like BBC Sport, the Met Office, Just Eat, Time Out and Yplan, so we’re making sure we deliver relevant local apps too,” he said.

Improved battery life and performance compared to the US

Janes explained that Amazon has attempted to address complaints around the Fire phone’s software, extending battery life by around 10-15% and improving performance through software updates. The UK version of the Fire phone will launch with Amazon’s second major update to its software, along with customisations to voice recognition to handle different British accents.

Amazon’s biggest difference from the Samsung Galaxy S5, Apple iPhone, Sony Xperia Z3 and HTC’s One M8 is its “dynamic perspective”, which uses four front-facing cameras to track the position of the user’s head to create a simulated 3D experience that moves as the user moves their head.

For Amazon, the Fire phone is another gateway into its e-commerce and media services, with integration with its Amazon Prime on-demand video service and music store.

Its Firefly app recognises items using the smartphone’s camera allowing users to buy those items with one click, be they songs, books, electronics or anything else Amazon sells. The service will also recognise restaurant signs, wine labels, paintings, linking users to sites giving more information about them.

Amazon’s FireFly app recognises objects through the smartphone’s camera and TV shows and movies through the microphone, even tracking position and scenes in shows and movies. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian

Amazon has 250m active customer accounts worldwide, but half of its revenues come from north America. Both the US and UK are rapidly approaching smartphone saturation point, with 70% of all mobile phone owners having a smartphone.

‘We hope to sell a lot in the UK’

It is hoped the Fire phone will tempt those already plugged into Amazon’s UK services, including its Kindle e-reader, Kindle Fire tablets and media services.

“We hope to sell a lot in the UK,” said Janes. “We think the value we’re bringing at this price-point … on a 2GB tariff costing £32 a month (with the handset thrown in) plus the bundled services is really competitive and it will register with customers.”

Amazon’s Fire phone will be available exclusively on O2 on 30 September with a range of tariffs available for data, calls and texts including a new 20GB 4G data plan, with pre-orders available from today.

The Fire phone also launches in Germany today and may expand further into Europe in the near future.

• Amazon Fire phone review roundup: misfiring on almost all cylinders

• Amazon has sold no more than 35,000 Fire phones, data suggests

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