Chapter 5. Camera and Photos

For more and more people, a smartphone is increasingly becoming the primary camera used for most photography, which makes sense, since it’s always on you and available when you need it. So, it’s important that the camera on the phone is good, and phone specs are becoming significant features in most marketing for new devices.

Fortunately, though knowing the specs doesn’t always tell you all that much (large megapixel count doesn’t always translate into high-quality photos), Fire’s phone is high quality, competitive with specs, and, most importantly, has unique features that really make it stand out. Again, since this guide assumes you’ve used a smartphone camera before, this chapter will focus on those new and innovative features, combined with unique benefits of the associated Photos app and related Amazon services.

Camera Specs

For the record, the Fire phone has a 13MP rear-facing camera, LED flash, f/2.0 lens, 2.1MP front-facing camera, and the rear-facing camera records video in 1080p HD.

But first, a quick pointer to how to take a picture quickly. Just presss the Camera button (see Figure 1-1) quickly (if you hold it down too long, you’ll open the Firefly app) to bring up the camera from anywhere (within an app, from the lock screen, or while the screen is asleep). Press it again (or tap the shutter icon, shown in Figure 5-1 to take a picture.

The shutter icon in the Camera app
Figure 5-1. The ...

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