The phone also uses tilting to do a whole lot more. Just by moving the phone, you can pull up menus in Fire OS or scroll through text in an app. These tilt features have annoyed the life out of us before, but those Samsung and LG phones usually used the accelerometer to accomplish their effects. On the Fire phone, it works much better, but we're still not 100 percent sold on the idea. More interesting are some random tilt features that bring in panels from the left and right. It's not that much easier to use than a simple swipe, but in a funny way it does feel natural. But there's a fine line between neat tilt trick and annoying stuff popping up in front of you all the time — and only extended use will tell us which side of that line the Fire phone falls on.

Firefly, a way to scan and identify products and media around you just by pointing a camera at something

The phone's rear camera has a lot more work to do than just taking photos. It also facilitates one of the Fire Phone's key features: Firefly, a way to scan and identify products and media around you just by pointing a camera at something. Amazon wants you using this a lot, and it's put a dedicated button on the side of the Fire Phone that'll send you right into Firefly mode.

This lets the Fire Phone do a number of different things. For one, you can pull up more information about TV shows or paintings, you can look at a record to start a new radio station based on it, or you can scan in text, like a phone number. More important for Amazon though is Firefly's ability to identify products, like food and books. You can guess exactly where this feature is going: once you scan a product, you'll have the opportunity to buy it from Amazon. It's a clear shot at brick-and-mortar retail stores, giving shoppers an incredibly fast way to compare prices. And usually, there's a good chance that Amazon will win out. There simply has never been a better device to help you indulge in impulse purchases — a prospect that has us both intrigued and terrified in equal parts.

But just as a camera, so far it seems pretty solid. It's a 13-megapixel shooter that Bezos had the bravery to compare directly to the iPhone 5S and Samsung Galaxy S5 on stage. We obviously haven't had enough time to fully test it, but our dozen or so shots in decent light came out sharp, well-focused, and with good color balance. It's at least as good as your mid-to-top tier Android phone (even if that may not be the highest praise possible these days).

As for the OS, it's basically a slightly modified version of what Amazon has already created for the Fire OS on its tablets. You have a homescreen with a giant carousel of your most-recently used apps and content, along with a standard app grid underneath. It involves a lot of big, chunky graphics on a black background, but it's a remarkably consistent aesthetic that works for casual use, though power-users will probably want to look elsewhere.