If you’re into a good bargain, you may have noticed yesterday that Amazon had a massive price cut on their Amazon Fire Phone, slashing the price from $449.00 down to a mere $159. This isn’t the first time that Amazon has had a major price cut on the phone, which shouldn’t be a surprise given how much of a flop the phone was. However, despite negative reviews, I guess I’m still a little baffled when I read that even at just $159, many consider the phone too expensive for consideration.
I disagree with that sentiment. I think that $160 is actually a really good deal for the Fire Phone. Maybe not for everybody, but I think that a lot of people could actually benefit greatly at that price.
Before I get too far, it’s worth a mention that the Fire Phone is no longer on sale for $159 at the time this article was published, and it’s back up to its original $449.00 price. I will say that I do think that this price is too expensive and Amazon should keep at least a sub-$200 price at this point; the Fire Phone will never pick up steam at the $449 price point.
But back to the sale, and what the Fire Phone is really worth. To a lot of people, $159 still seems too high for a phone that has a forked version of Android with its own catered app store (that don’t include Google Apps), a couple of performance issues, and really not much else to write home about when it comes to what you get right out of the box. I think if that was all you ended up getting for the price I may be inclined to agree, but the $160 price point included something else of value: a year’s worth of Amazon Prime, a $99 value.
While Prime might not be a valuable service to everybody, I have found that I personally (and many people I know) get more than my money’s worth with the program. Free two-day shipping on most items I have ever wanted, unlimited streaming of a good selection of movies and TV series with Prime Instant Video, the ability to borrow books from the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library, Prime Music, photo storage in Amazon Cloud, and more. I also can't stress enough how excellent my customer service experiences have been with Amazon. I have always thought Amazon Prime was a really good deal, and the fact that it’s included in this price of the Fire Phone actually made the phone itself priced at $60.
And since it’s an Android phone, you have the ability to root the device and flash a ROM on it – and now that there’s apparently a stable Cyanogenmod 11 available and under development, the Amazon Fire Phone actually makes for a decently priced play thing. If you’ve ever been interested in the development side of Android, the Fire Phone (when on sale) also makes for a good test device.
Or, you know, if all else fails, it’s actually completely acceptable for doing what a phone is supposed to do in the first place: make calls, send texts, take pictures, and occasional web browsing.
For people who don’t already have Prime (or who know that they’ll continue a Prime membership in the future, seeing as the purchase of a Fire Phone would extend your Prime for a year past your expiration date) the Fire Phone priced at $160 is a good value. It’s $60 for a decent back-up phone. For people who aren’t interested in Prime or feel that they wouldn’t use the service, I can see where maybe $160 would seem a little unfair. For the most part, though, I don’t see where all the hate came from.
If you did happen to snag a Fire Phone yesterday during the sale, you might want to mark your calendars for this upcoming July 15th, Amazon’s Prime Day. According to Amazon, they’ll have even more deals than you would see on Black Friday (and with only 20 some odd weeks left until the shopping holidays start, the time is now to start shopping). The deals change every 10 minutes, with longer-lasting Lightning Deals happening throughout the day as well. As a current Prime Member, I wouldn’t be surprised to see the Amazon Fire Phone as one of these deals that day as well, among other tech gadgets.
I wasn’t a huge fan of the Fire Phone when it came out, but the massive price cuts that Amazon offers from time to time actually do make the phone worth checking out – and I have no doubt in my mind that there will be more (and probably steeper) price cuts of this device in the near future.