iFixit teardown reveals Amazon Fire Phone not designed for easy DIY repairs

The Amazon's new Fire Phone is not DIY friendly. Or so say the folks at iFixit, who published a teardown on the new smartphone yesterday, giving it a ranking of 3 out of 10 for repairability, with 10 being the easiest to fix.

The gadget repair experts warned that the phone is not modular, with components often sharing cables. Also, the four extra cameras on the front, that track a user's head movements to enable special screen effects, make things much more difficult, as they are difficult to replace individually.

iFixit noted that the construction of the Fire Phone is similar to the iPhone 5 because of its bottom screws. Also, there is no carrier logo, suggesting that more carriers, besides AT&T, will eventually sell the device.

The teardown reveals that the phone contains chips from Qualcomm, NXP, and Samsung Electronics. While the device's radio frequency, power amplifier, audio, and Wi-Fi chips are from Qualcomm, 32GB of NAND memory chips, used for photo, music, and media storage, and 2GB of DRAM memory chips come from Samsung.

NXP contributed a near field communication chip, enabling features such as mobile payments. The smartphone also includes a touch screen controller from Synaptics, and a communications chip from Skyworks.

Priced at $649 contract-free or $199.99 with a contract with AT&T, the 4.7-inch Fire Phone sports a Qualcomm 2.2GHz quad-core Snapdragon 800 CPU, Adreno 330 GPU, 2GB RAM, a 13-megapixel rear-facing camera, and a 2.1-megapixel front-facing camera. The device hit stores this week and has received lukewarm reviews.

Next Jimmy Kimmel tells people this $20 Casio watch is Apple's new iWatchPrev Google reportedly seals the deal on Twitch $1 billion acquisition$(function(){$('img', 'img-wrap', 'li', '.related-products .teaser-list').equalHeights();});

View the original article here

Amazon reports steep loss after launching bevy of new products, services

Amazon on Thursday reported poorer-than-anticipated second quarter results. The online retail giant posted a loss of $126 million, or 27 cents per share - far greater than the 15 cents per share loss that analysts had forecasted.

In the year-ago period, Amazon posted a loss of just $7 million, or 2 cents per share. Revenue, however, rose 23 percent to $19.34 billion and was spot-on with expectations of $19.33 billion. That's up from $15.7 billion during the same period in 2013.

Amazon launched a number of new products and services this quarter which is the primary reason why losses were so steep.

As Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos outlined in the earnings report, his company recently introduced Sunday delivery to a quarter of the US population. They also launched European cross-border two-day delivery for Prime, launched Prime Music, created three original kids TV series, launched the Fire TV set-top box, launched the Fire smartphone and launched Kindle Unlimited.

He said they are continuing to work hard to make the Amazon customer experience better and better.

Despite all of that, however, investors weren't pleased with Amazon's results. Share value plummeted more than 10 percent on the news, losing more than $36 of its value.

Looking ahead, Amazon expects third quarter revenue between $19.7 billion and $21.5 billion while analysts anticipate revenue around $20.81 billion.

Next Microsoft explains quantum computing in this easy-to-follow videoPrev Jimmy Kimmel tells people this $20 Casio watch is Apple's new iWatch

View the original article here

iFixit teardown reveals Amazon Fire Phone not designed for easy DIY repairs

The Amazon's new Fire Phone is not DIY friendly. Or so say the folks at iFixit, who published a teardown on the new smartphone yesterday, giving it a ranking of 3 out of 10 for repairability, with 10 being the easiest to fix.

The gadget repair experts warned that the phone is not modular, with components often sharing cables. Also, the four extra cameras on the front, that track a user's head movements to enable special screen effects, make things much more difficult, as they are difficult to replace individually.

iFixit noted that the construction of the Fire Phone is similar to the iPhone 5 because of its bottom screws. Also, there is no carrier logo, suggesting that more carriers, besides AT&T, will eventually sell the device.

The teardown reveals that the phone contains chips from Qualcomm, NXP, and Samsung Electronics. While the device's radio frequency, power amplifier, audio, and Wi-Fi chips are from Qualcomm, 32GB of NAND memory chips, used for photo, music, and media storage, and 2GB of DRAM memory chips come from Samsung.

NXP contributed a near field communication chip, enabling features such as mobile payments. The smartphone also includes a touch screen controller from Synaptics, and a communications chip from Skyworks.

Priced at $649 contract-free or $199.99 with a contract with AT&T, the 4.7-inch Fire Phone sports a Qualcomm 2.2GHz quad-core Snapdragon 800 CPU, Adreno 330 GPU, 2GB RAM, a 13-megapixel rear-facing camera, and a 2.1-megapixel front-facing camera. The device hit stores this week and has received lukewarm reviews.

Next Jimmy Kimmel tells people this $20 Casio watch is Apple's new iWatchPrev Google reportedly seals the deal on Twitch $1 billion acquisition$(function(){$('img', 'img-wrap', 'li', '.related-products .teaser-list').equalHeights();});

View the original article here

Amazon reports steep loss after launching bevy of new products, services

Amazon on Thursday reported poorer-than-anticipated second quarter results. The online retail giant posted a loss of $126 million, or 27 cents per share - far greater than the 15 cents per share loss that analysts had forecasted.

In the year-ago period, Amazon posted a loss of just $7 million, or 2 cents per share. Revenue, however, rose 23 percent to $19.34 billion and was spot-on with expectations of $19.33 billion. That's up from $15.7 billion during the same period in 2013.

Amazon launched a number of new products and services this quarter which is the primary reason why losses were so steep.

As Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos outlined in the earnings report, his company recently introduced Sunday delivery to a quarter of the US population. They also launched European cross-border two-day delivery for Prime, launched Prime Music, created three original kids TV series, launched the Fire TV set-top box, launched the Fire smartphone and launched Kindle Unlimited.

He said they are continuing to work hard to make the Amazon customer experience better and better.

Despite all of that, however, investors weren't pleased with Amazon's results. Share value plummeted more than 10 percent on the news, losing more than $36 of its value.

Looking ahead, Amazon expects third quarter revenue between $19.7 billion and $21.5 billion while analysts anticipate revenue around $20.81 billion.

Next Microsoft explains quantum computing in this easy-to-follow videoPrev Jimmy Kimmel tells people this $20 Casio watch is Apple's new iWatch

View the original article here

Amazon updates Prime Music library with a massive number of new songs and more

Last month Amazon officially launched its Prime music service, offering its Prime subscribers unlimited, ad-free streaming. Today, the company has announced the library of songs users have to choose from is expanding dramatically along with some additional enhancements to the service.

Prime members already had access to over a million tracks when the service launched on June 12, and today Amazon has added "hundreds of thousands" of new songs to the mix. The additional tracks are from artists that are already in the catologue as well some new talent including Miles Davis, Kendrick Lamar, Linkin Park, Shakira, Deadmau5, Ella Fitzgerald, Young the Giant, A$AP Rocky, Oasis, Ray Charles, Skrillex, John Coltrane and many others.

Amazon said users are really pleased with its curated Prime Playlists and have decided to add hundreds of new ones. A few examples the company gives are “Upbeat Indie Vibes,” “Electronic Beats for Work,” “Rainy Day Jazz,” “Jack White and More,” “Bass Drops and Fist-Pumps,” and “Justin Timberlake’s Top Songs.”

Prime Music is available to all Prime members in the US and will run on Kindle Fire HD/HDX, iOS, Android, PC, and Mac. Those who are interested in giving it a test drive can check out Amazon's 30-day free trial.

The boost to its Prime Music catalogue joins its Instant Video service, Free Two-Day Shipping, and the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library as benefits of being an Amazon Prime member.

Next Motorola wants you to unlock your Moto X with this digital tattooMore See a summary of the most popular topics in tech right now$(function(){$('img', 'img-wrap', 'li', '.related-products .teaser-list').equalHeights();});

View the original article here