Image The Fire Phone’s camera can recognize phone numbers on a poster, as well as products for you to buy on Amazon. Credit... Ted S. Warren/Associated Press

The Fire Phone, which runs a heavily customized version of Google’s Android operating system, isn’t as powerful as other high-end phones. It doesn’t have as many apps as those for Android and Apple’s iOS, and it does not plug as neatly into Apple’s and Google’s content and services ecosystems.

Also, this phone is no looker. An indistinct slab of glass and plastic, the Fire Phone looks more like a minimalist prototype than a finished product.

But what the Fire Phone lacks in aesthetics and breadth of capabilities, it makes up for in ease of use. Consider the phone’s main app-launching interface, the “carousel,” which should be familiar to people who’ve used Amazon’s Kindle Fire tablets. The interface constantly sorts your apps according to how recently you’ve used them. This let me navigate my phone very efficiently, often saving me from getting lost in a sea of apps — a common occurrence on most other phones.

And if you ever get bogged down, stuck, lost or curious while you’re using the Fire Phone, help is never far. Just tap the Mayday button, and faster than you can believe it, a live, friendly human tech-support agent appears on your screen, ready to help. (Mayday made its debut on the Kindle Fire tablets last year.) I called up Mayday four times to pepper its agents with questions. In every case, a person popped up on the screen in under 10 seconds.

Image Its Mayday feature is helpful if a user gets bogged down, stuck, lost or curious. Credit... Ted S. Warren/Associated Press

Because the agent can see your screen (not your face), the calls were often productive. When I asked how to get the clock to stop disappearing from the top of my screen, an agent took me to the specific settings panel I needed. He saved me many minutes of searching, and perhaps even from throwing the phone at the wall in frustration.