The tale of the Fire Phone, Amazon’s very strange smartphone

The tale of the Fire Phone, Amazon’s very strange smartphone

With a 3D screen, a lot of cameras, and some big ideas about smartphones, Amazon came roaring into the mobile game in 2014. By the end of the year, it was over.

How the Amazon Fire Phone failed

When Jeff Bezos decided Amazon needed to get in the smartphone game, he went all in. And the resulting device, the Fire Phone, wound up more densely packed with big ideas than just about any gadget you’ll find anywhere. There was just one tiny problem: they were mostly bad ideas. The Fire Phone shipped in 2014 with a feature list a mile long. The screen had a 3D effect! There were, like, 400 cameras! There was a whole home screen filled with so…