Amazon Fire Phone teardown reveals hints of Apple, Samsung
Gadget repair expert iFixit takes a deeper look into the guts of Amazon's first smartphone and finds several new details.
Amazon appears to have taken a few hints from Apple and a few chips from Samsung in the building of Fire , its first smartphone. Gadget repair expert iFixit published a teardown on Amazon's new phone on Thursday, finding all sorts of hidden information inside the device.
One of the first things iFixit noticed after prying open the device was that even though there was a large Amazon logo, there was no carrier logo. This could mean more carriers, besides AT&T, will eventually sell the device.
"Amazon seems to have taken a page from Apple's book and didn't include AT&T's logo on the phone," the repair site wrote.
iFixit also noted that the construction of the Amazon Fire Phone was "very similar" to the iPhone 5 because of its bottom screws. The site said mimicking iPhone 5 construction is better than copying the iPhone 5S, because the earlier device is more repairable.
As for repair, iFixit said that the Amazon Fire Phone is still pretty low on the fix-it scale. The site gave the smartphone a ranking of 3 out of 10 for repairability, with 10 being the easiest to fix. This ranking is also in line with iPhones, which are notorious for being difficult to repair.
Looking into the guts of the Amazon Fire Phone, iFixit confirmed that the 4.7-inch phone houses a Qualcomm 2.2GHz quad-core Snapdragon 800 CPU, Adreno 330 GPU, 2GB of RAM, and a 13-megapixel rear-facing camera. A deeper look revealed that the device's radio frequency, power amplifier, audio, and Wi-Fi chips were also from Qualcomm.
Chips made by Samsung included 32GB of NAND memory chips, which are used for photo, music, and media storage, and 2GB of DRAM memory chips. NXP contributed the communication chips, which can be used for mobile payments.
Amazon started presales of the Fire Phone last month and the device hit stores this week. The company has touted the smartphone as having a bevy of new features to elevate users experience. Those features include Firefly , which is an image- and audio-recognition tool, a 3D interface, Mayday help service, and Amazon shopping integration. Despite the strong effort, the company faces stiff competition from Apple and Samsung, which lead the smartphone market.