Hearing the news that Google is taking another stab at social media with a new group-chatting app dubbed “Spaces” may feel like deja vu for anyone paying attention to the tech giant’s previous, mostly unsuccessful efforts to gain traction in the social media world with Google+. But Google isn’t the only big name in the tech world that’s tried and failed to popularize a new tech product, not by a long shot. [More]
fire phone
Amazon Has Finally Sold All Of Its Fire Phones
By 9.9.15
Last year, Amazon endlessly teased us all with what was going to be either a new smartphone or some kind of exotic sex toy. Unfortunately for Amazon, it was the former, and the Fire Phone failed to catch on. That’s okay, though, because the last phones have been sold, and the engineers who made the device into a real-life phone are gone. Amazon can just pretend that none of this ever happened. [More]
Amazon Lays Off Engineers Behind Fire Phone, Reorganizes Hardware Division
By 8.27.15
You’ve probably never heard of Lab126, but you’ve definitely heard of their parent company and their products. They’re a division of Amazon, started in Silicon Valley eleven years ago to create the e-reader that we now know as the Kindle. They also created some projects that haven’t caught on quite as well, like the Fire Phone, and engineers who worked on that projects have reportedly been sent on their way. [More]
Amazon Takes $170 Million Loss On Fire Phone Flop
By 10.24.14
Despite Amazon advertising the device on every doorstep and dropping the price under a buck, the company’s Fire Phone, companion smartphone to its line of tablets and TV streaming devices, failed to catch on with the public. Maybe it was the AT&T exclusivity, or the fact that it runs a customized version of Google’s Android operating system, without access to Google’s app marketplace. [More]
Amazon Now Selling Fire Phone For $.99 With New Contract
By 9.8.14
It hasn’t even been two months since Amazon released its not-quite-3D Fire phone and it’s already slashed the price on the device like it’s a 3-year-old feature phone, announcing this morning that the Fire can be had for $.99 to customers willing to sign a two-year contract with AT&T. [More]
Does Amazon Want Everyone To Know My Neighbor Bought A Fire Phone?
By 8.8.14
“Amazon would like you to know that there is a $300 phone on your neighbor’s porch,” reader Will wrote to us, attaching a photo that he took in the common area of his condo complex. Could that be? Is Amazon really labeling boxes that contain the Fire Phone with what’s inside and not requiring carriers to ask customers for a signature? Nope. [More]
Amazon Finally Unveils Details Of 3-D Fire Phone
By 6.18.14
After weeks, months, millennia of speculation that Amazon would get into the phone business, the e-tail giant has finally unveiled the smartphone it had been promising (via “leaked” stories and quotes from “people close to the situation”) since the dawn of man. So what is it and is it worth spending your hard-earned (or even your stolen) money on? [More]
