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Comment by JohnTHaller | Hacker News Reader

From my post in another thread: It's $199 with a 2 year contract with AT&T, meaning it's a $649 phone (now confirmed). It's priced with other 'premium' phones like the iPhone 5S and the Galaxy S5 (both $199 with a 2 year contract, $649 off contract at AT&T). Unfortunately, Amazon's other products like the Kindle Fire are anything but premium hardware and software-wise. On the software side this is partially due to the Amazon-first mentality for all media and partially due to the extremely clunky Amazon UI and app store. Then again, I wouldn't consider Samsung a 'premium' phone software-wise either due to my poor experience with the Galaxy S4's clunky setup after coming form 'pure' Android. It's still far better than the Kindle Fire, though.

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How is this remotely competitive in a world full of $179 Moto G's? $219 Moto G LTE's? Or even a $350 Nexus?

This seems like a phone from two or three years ago where $650 for a non-premium brand would have been passable. I just bought a Moto G LTE for my wife and its a wonderful phone. I don't see what Amazon would bring to the table for an extra $420. That's almost 10 months of service right there.

I don't think it is. Except for people who buy on-contract and don't know better about the pricing and features compared to other phones. Heck, you're even stuck with Amazon's Silk browser... there's no Firefox or Chrome in the Amazon App Store... so most users can forget about syncing this with anything.

Aka the MitM browser.

http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2011/09/28/amazon-kindle-fir...

Or you can uncheck the "Accelerate page loading" checkbox.

How many consumers do you honestly expect to know, recognize, and understand?

I can tell you from experience 0 of the ones I've encountered outside the IT/Startup space were aware of that is what it does.

> How many consumers do you honestly expect to know, recognize, and understand?

Probably around the same number who care that their traffic is going through Amazon first.

I bet if you went and talked to people if they were comfortable with all of their online banking being routed through Amazon...I suspect most would say No. Just a guess.

If you put it in terms they understand, they care.

Amazon says HTTPS is not intercepted

https://www.eff.org/2011/october/amazon-fire%E2%80%99s-new-b...

Also, Amazon has most of its customers banking information already.

Credit card != Banking Information.

And if they pushed an update to change this [even accidentally], how would you know?

Thats silly.

How would you know if any browser pushed an update [even accidentally], with this side effect?

1) Access a page you control to check.

2) Silk is the only one I know of that a mere coding error could cause this. It isn't like Chrome and Firefox have a fleet of machines and code designed to act as an always-on proxy.

> How many consumers do you honestly expect to know, recognize, and understand?

Not many, but more than would understand or care about the "man in the middle attack browser" argument.

You can certainly side load applications so Firefox is not a problem and if you know what you're doing Chrome isn't either. Definitely less than ideal though.

You can, but you have to enable side-loading (most people who buy this phone won't even know what that means) and then you need to worry about it getting out of date. That's a big deal for browsers and not having the app store automatically update you (as it will on Android) to the latest version is a big security risk.

Different markets. The Moto G (and Moto E, cheaper at $130) have much lower specs, and there are phones that have the same specs as a Moto G or Moto E for half the price (like the AT&T Radiant) because they don't carry the "Moto" brand.

Radiant doesn't have the 'same' specs as the G.

Radiant: 480 x 800 G: 720 x 1280

Radiant has a much smaller battery.

G has quad core, radiant has dual.

G has 8gb of storage. Radiant has 2 available to user.

Moto G comes in an LTE flavor for $30 more, no option with Radiant.

Radiant is also forever stuck on 4.1 while the G continues to get updates and will probably get some for some time.

I was comparing the E to the Radiant, not the G.

Moto E: Dual-core 1.2 GHz, 4.3 inches, 540x960, Internal 4GB, 1GB RAM, MicroSD, 5MP Camera, 854x480 Video, HSDPA, Li-Ion 1980 mAh, Android 4.4

Price: $130 @ Amazon

ZTE Radiant: Dual-core 1.4 GHz, 4.0 inches, 480x800, Internal 2GB, 1GB RAM, MicroSD, 5MP Camera, 1280x720 Video, HSDPA, Li-Ion 1735 mAh, Android 4.1

Price: $75 @ Amazon

The Moto E and the ZTE Radiant do not have identical specs. But the Radiant is half the cost at almost the same specs. It's clearly a better value. If you can't stand not having the latest Android you can install many custom ROMs, or just wait a year or two for another dirt-cheap phone with a newer version and buy that.

AT&T made significant changes to their plans earlier this year, so buying a 2-year contract from them is now a terrible idea. You're much better using their installment plan or just paying full price for the phone.

Is there a place I can see these plan changes?

https://www.att.com/shop/wireless/data-plans.html#fbid=GgQnk...

Scroll down to family plans. Now a new line just costs $15 if its a phone not on a contract. Else its $40

Here's a chart:

http://www.att.com/media/att/2014/support/images/MSV_Image_3...

With a 10GB plan you end up paying $800 for the phone ($199 up-front, and $25mo extra) under the 2 year commitment plan. Definitely a better deal to just pay $650 up-front.

I think you might have gotten it wrong. From what I recall, the discount for no-contract that they give you is more like 15$, not 25$.

In any case, I'm with Aio Wireless, now Cricket Wireless -- same network, but much better deal, plus unlimited everything.

Depends on your data package. <10GB is $15/month discount. 10+GB is a $25/month discount. The linked chart shows this.

I agree with you in regard to the software on the Kindle fire, but I actually felt the hardware wasn't so bad. Anandtech did a review of the screen and found it to be the best screen (if not, close to the best screen) on any android tablet, including the updated nexus 7. Are there specific aspects that make the hardware less premium?

You can also click the "Without a Service Plan" to see the price, $649.

I had typed this up before they announced the off-contract pricing in another thread and was quoting it here. The off-contract price was an assumption at that point.

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