It may have felt like the smartphone world had reached a point of status quo until a few weeks ago, when Amazon launched the Fire Smartphone after years of preparations. Chief Executive Jeff Bezos described it as the gadget that “puts everything you love about Amazon in the palm of your hand — instant access to Amazon’s vast content ecosystem and exclusive features.” The technical specifications present a device worthy of  premium classification. A 2.2GHz Quad-core Snapdragon 800 CPU with Adreno 330 GPU and 2 GB of RAM fuels the Fire, complemented by a 2400mAh battery that burns up to 22 hours of talk time, 285 hours of standby, up to 11 hours of video playback, and up to 65 hours of audio playback. The screen is 4.7-inches with glass on the front and back giving it a less plasticky feeling than a Samsung Galaxy, but adds to the weight reaching 160 grams. Unfortunately, the Gorilla Glass 3 it has on both sides is durable but not shatter-proof, thus doubling the risk to break it. The OS is Fire OS 3.5.0 built on the open source version of Google’s Android operating system, without Google’s standard suite of apps and without the Google Play app store. Fire has its own app store, browser, email client, and non-Google maps. Among the most popular apps in its store are Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Pandora, Netflix, HBO Go, Uber, Yelp, and StubHub. Two cameras, a 13 MP rear-facing camera with multi-frame HDR, auto focus, optical image stabilization, f/2.0 5-element wide aperture lens, LED flash, and a 2.1 MP front-facing camera have a dedicated button to wake the camera and snap a photo, even when the device is asleep. The Fire Phone shoots 1080p video and features HDR, panorama...