Today, Amazon officially added five new smartphones to its lineup of Prime Exclusives. This is a program that has been running for quite some time now, seeing fruition with its own Kindle lineup, and it appears it's going well enough for Amazon. Which, I'd imagine, comes down to the devices it has on offer and their relatively cheap price tags.
Even the devices Amazon announced today, which are all up for pre-order, are worthwhile handsets in their own right. The Nokia 6 offers a premium build, and the Moto E4 is another entry-level handset that should definitely be more than good enough for anyone looking to get their hands on a cheap unlocked device. Alcatel added three new smartphones today, too, with the Idol 5S offering a fingerprint reader and a $199 price tag thanks to the Prime Exclusive promotion.
If you aren't familiar with the Prime Exclusive initiative, it sees Amazon placing "lockscreen offers & ads" on the smartphone, while also offering a discount on the phone itself as a trade-off. For instance, the Nokia 6 is regularly priced at $229.99, but if you go with the Prime Exclusive variant you'll only have to pay $179.99.
Some discounts are bigger than others, but when you're buying an unlocked phone outright, saving any amount is probably a good thing.
I haven't tried the Prime Exclusive deal with a smartphone yet, but when I did own a Kindle I saved a few bucks up front to have ads shown to me on a semi-regular basis. I thought it would be pretty annoying, but honestly the fact they were just on the lockscreen, which is easy to bypass without even looking at it, I never even gave it a second thought. I'm not sure how much money I saved to be honest, as this was many years ago, but I'd probably do it again if I was in the market for a new E-reader.
Anything beyond ads on the lockscreen, though, and I'd be an unwilling participant.
The fact that Amazon keeps its Prime Exclusive phones around tells me that the program must be doing some good, even if it probably isn't raking in the cashflow for Amazon. And with the latest batch of phones, including the Nokia 6, I wanted to reach out and find out if any of you have used the promotion before in the past, and if so what you thought about it. On the other hand, even if you do want one of the phones offered by Amazon through its lockscreen deal, do you hate ads enough that you'll pay the full price for the handset to avoid them? Let me know!
