> I would make it a plain, vanilla Nexus-like phone running vanilla Android with no skins and not tied to any contracts or carriers, but priced $50 less than a comparable Nexus 5 or whatever is the current Nexus. Or else, make it about $400 but throw in a year of Prime to sweeten the deal. Maybe add a couple of features to distinguish it, such as a microSD memory expansion port. Forget the lame Amazon AppStore, or at least provide both -- AppStore and Google Play, and let the customer choose.
If they'd actually done this, it'd probably be a pretty good competitor to the Nexus 6, which is not a bad phone at all but departed quite a bit from the precedent of the Nexus 5, other than running stock Android. (Huge, very expensive.)
The Android market is ripe for a true successor of the Nexus 5, and Amazon would have made a lot of sense to fill that niche. The best thing we've got right now is the 2014 Moto X, which admittedly is a very good phone.
Yep. The power button on my Nexus 5 just went up and I had the choice of throwing money at a 14-month-old phone (which is a bit sooner than I had hoped to replace it but old enough that I had to think twice about paying for maintenance) or buying a new phone. Nexus 6 at $650 and in a larger form factor than I would like got me to buy a Moto X instead. $200 cheaper and in a more reasonable size made it the closest thing to a Nexus 5 replacement I ran across.
I would have gladly considered something from Amazon if it had been along the lines of an updated Nexus 5 (under $400, stock or virtually stock like the Moto X) even if, like the Nexus line, it sacrificed a bit of that premium "Cadillac" polish like the wooden back and metal edged frame. Only reason I even bothered with that is because there wasn't a cheaper Nexus that wasn't the year+ old N5.
Hell...don't even bundle gapps if you want to include the Amazon store...just as long as someone can build AOSP for it and I can install it myself.
When the Nexus 7 came out it was roughly equivalent to the Kindle Fire in terms of price and specs but other than fellow Android fans and tech site readers, I didn't know anyone else who bought a Nexus 7. Everyone I knew who wanted an affordable (read: cheaper than an iPad) but functional small tablet bought Kindle Fires so clearly their brand awareness and marketing is worth something if people were willing to buy an slightly inferior device for $50 more.
If they'd actually done this, it'd probably be a pretty good competitor to the Nexus 6, which is not a bad phone at all but departed quite a bit from the precedent of the Nexus 5, other than running stock Android. (Huge, very expensive.)
The Android market is ripe for a true successor of the Nexus 5, and Amazon would have made a lot of sense to fill that niche. The best thing we've got right now is the 2014 Moto X, which admittedly is a very good phone.