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Amazon’s Fire Phone could be a hot holiday item

June 20, 2014 By Anne Leave a Comment

Now there’s a phone that puts the Amazon store and all that accompanying “retail therapy” right in people’s pockets. It’s a pretty slick looking little device, so here’s fair warning to parents worried about kids getting caught up in consumer culture that you may see this on some wish lists. [Of course, this is not to say that Amazon.com with all its convenience isn’t already in our pockets (and wallets); as much as I love hanging out and shopping in independent bookshops, I’ve been known to buy and read a book or two on my iPhone, using Amazon and its Kindle app.]

Called the Fire Phone (to go with Amazon’s Kindle Fire), this device sort of runs on Google’s Android operating system, but modified, so that not all Android apps will run on it – which is only really a problem if the 240,000 some odd apps available in Amazon’s Appstore aren’t enough (Apple’s App Store and Google Play “each have about five times as many offerings,” Wired reports). HOWEVER, I don’t know whether parents will see this as good or bad: Kids and other media-sharers will probably be dismayed to find that Instagram, Snapchat and YouTube won’t work on this phone. Amazon may have to fix that! What the phone will be great for, Wired says, is 3D effects and hands-free navigation. Its 3D technology makes the phone “a little diorama box, with stunning effects for 3-D maps, games, and homescreen wallpaper,” according to Wired.

“Pricing for the Fire Phone will be $200 for the 32GB version and $300 for the 64GB one. Both of those are with two-year contracts. It will only be available on AT&T for the time being, and will go on sale July 25th,” Wired reports.

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Filed Under: apps, mobile, Parenting Tagged With: 3D, Amazon, Android, apps, Fire Phone, mobile technology, smartphone

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IMPORTANT RESOURCES

Our (DIGITAL) PARENTING BASICS: Safety + Social
NAMLE, the National Association for Media Literacy Education
CASEL.org & the 5 core social-emotional competencies of SEL
Center for Democracy & Technology
Center for Innovative Public Health Research
Childnet International
Committee for Children
Congressional Internet Caucus Academy
ConnectSafely.org
Control Shift: a pivotal book for Internet safety
Crimes Against Children Research Center
Crisis Textline
Cyber Civil Rights Initiative's Revenge Porn Crisis Line
Cyberwise.org
danah boyd's blog and book about networked youth
Disconnected, Carrie James's book on digital ethics
FOSI.org's Good Digital Parenting
The research of Global Kids Online
The Good Project at Harvard's School of Education
If you watch nothing else: "Parenting in a Digital Age" TED Talk by Prof. Sonia Livingstone
The International Bullying Prevention Association
Let Grow Foundation
Making Caring Common
Raising Digital Natives, author Devorah Heitner's site
Renee Hobbs at the Media Education Lab
MediaSmarts.ca
The New Media Literacies
Report of the Aspen Task Force on Learning & the Internet and our guide to Creating Trusted Learning Environments
The Ruler Approach to social-emotional learning (Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence)
Sources of Strength
"Young & Online: Perspectives on life in a digital age" from young people in 26 countries (via UNICEF)
"Youth Safety on a Living Internet": 2010 report of the Online Safety & Technology Working Group (and my post about it)

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