Fire Phone: Out of the Box

Preface

After years of speculation and increasingly realistic rumors, Amazon finally satisfied the public’s request (or at least curiosity) to add a smartphone to its hardware stable. Like the other devices in that stable (beginning with the original Kindle and its evolutionary iterations, continuing with the Kindle Fire and its later versions, and most recently in the Fire TV), the new Fire phone launches with a number of signature features that make it a uniquely Amazonian product.

The most obvious Amazon-only touch is a new feature that lets you instantly identify and order (via Amazon, of course) just about any product imaginable, from DVDs, CDs, and books (or their electronic equivalents) to soup, nuts, or pretty much anything with a barcode. Though the rationale for Amazon including such a feature is pretty obvious, the innovative implementation (in the form of Firefly, discussed in Chapter 3) is nothing short of magical.

Equally impressive is Dynamic Perspective (see Chapter 2), Amazon’s amazing new hyper-3D interface that leaves its defining touches on every screen of the Fire phone’s operating system. Add Mayday, the best customer service technology invented since the telephone (see Chapter 4), along with brand-new one-handed navigational gestures (see Chapter 1) and innovative camera features (see Chapter 5), and you have a realistic contender against the iPhone and Android phones that have already established themselves in the market.

Oh yeah, you can also use it to make phone calls.

But you probably already know how to make a phone call from a smartphone, as well as perform all of the other basic functionality shared by the best feature-rich devices, so this concise getting-started guide won’t make an effort to cover them. Rather than serve as a definitive manual, this book does not attempt to cover the device’s many features in detail. Instead, it assumes some familiarity with smartphones and is meant as an introduction to the new, innovative features available only on the Fire phone.^[1]

Prioritizing early information on innovative features over comprehensive coverage of every little detail, this book will get you started now on everything that is new and exciting about the Fire phone, right out of the box.

How to Use This Book

This book is organized into the following chapters on the unique features introduced in the new Fire phone:

Chapter 1, Getting Around the Fire

With the Fire phone, Amazon introduced new navigational tools that change the way you’re used to operating a smartphone. This chapter covers the hardware features that make them possible, along with how to use the operating system’s three-panel navigation, enhanced Carousel, and brand-new one-handed gestures.

Chapter 2, Dynamic Perspective

Amazon’s new hyper-3D interface influences almost every screen of the new Fire phone. This chapter explains what Dynamic Perspective is, how it works, and how to use it throughout the operating system and within individual apps, such as Maps and games.

Chapter 3, Firefly

With Firefly, Amazon has completely changed the way you’ll identify (and purchase) items in the world around you, with an interface that’s as delightful as it is useful. This chapter shows how to use Firefly to recognize (and act on that information) everything from physical media to music or video that is playing around you to numbers, text, and much more.

Chapter 4, Mayday

While Amazon is already known for their top-notch customer service, Mayday is a game changer, even for them. This chapter shows how to use one of the most effective and useful forms of tech support available anywhere today.

Chapter 5, Camera and Photos

The camera that comes with the Fire phone does everything you’d expect, but it has a few tricks up its sleeve that no other smartphone can claim. This chapter describes how new hardware features, such as optical image stabalization, help you get the best shot. It also shows how to take lenticular photos (as only the Fire can) and use the unlimited photo storage and backup options that Amazon provides for free to every Fire phone customer.

Conventions Used in This Book

Throughout this book, you’ll find sentences like this: “Options bar→Menu→Send.” That’s shorthand for a longer series of instructions that goes something like this: “Tap the middle of the screen to summon the Options bar; on it, tap the Menu button and, from the row that pops up above it, touch Send.” Our shorthand system helps keep things snappier than a set of long, drawn-out instructions would.

To call attention to something particularly useful or worth watching out for, the book uses notes like these:

Note

This element signifies a tip, suggestion, or general note.

Warning

This element indicates a warning or caution.

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^[1] Actually, with the exception of Mayday, which is also available on the latest version of the Kindle Fire HD, the features covered in this book are unique to the Fire phone and available on no other device, let alone any other phone.