5 reasons why the Amazon Fire Phone will not be your next phone

It was one of the tech world's worst kept secrets, but Amazon dutifully put on the razzle dazzle to announce its Fire Phone on Wednesday night.

The online shopping giant has been diversifying at a staggering rate in recent years, with the company's entry to the smartphone market trailing its assault on the tablet world by only two-and-a-half years.

Following the lead of the Amazon Kindle Fire range, the Fire Phone is notable for its strong ties with the world's biggest online shop. In fact, with a dedicated Firefly button, you can take a picture of any product and be taken to an appropriate Amazon listing within seconds.

Other unique features include a 3D viewing system that - get this - probably won't completely suck. It could well be a stand-out smartphone.

But all that aside, is the Amazon Fire Phone for you? As a committed pocket gamer, should this be your next phone ahead of the next big Apple or Android concoction?

Probably not, no. Here's why.

The Amazon Fire Phone will only be available in the US at first, where it will launch on July 25th.

While you might think of Amazon as a global brand, looking at previous Amazon hardware launches shows what a US-centric company it is.

While the latest Amazon tablet, the Kindle Fire HDX, took around a month to cross the pond, the very first example of the range (which is what the Fire Phone is) took a whopping 10 months.

With no mention of a wider release date for the Fire Phone, many of our European, Australian, Asian, and African readers looking for a new phone may have wait until the end of the year or beyond to get hold of the Fire Phone.

One of the major things that sets the Amazon Kindle Fire range of tablets apart is its excellent value. All of Amazon's devices are focused on making you shop on Amazon more. That's where the company makes its money.

As such, Amazon doesn't bother too much about profit margins on its hardware. They're cheap, in other words.

But the Amazon Fire Phone is surprisingly expensive. If you're in the US, picking up a Fire Phone on a two year contract will cost you $199 up front.

That's the same as an iPhone 5S, the undisputed pocket gaming king.

True, Amazon throws in a 12-month Amazon Prime subscription with that, which is worth $99. But for someone who isn't particularly invested in the Amazon ecosystem, who gets their music from Spotify or Google or Apple, and their video streaming from Netflix, is that really much of an offer?

Especially when you consider what you get for your money.

So the Amazon Fire Phone is priced at the same level as the iPhone 5S or a top-end Android phone like the Samsung Galaxy S5.

The thing is, the Fire Phone is technically inferior to current high-end Android phones like the Galaxy S5 or the HTC One, with which it shares its architecture and core OS.

Its quad-core Snapdragon 800 CPU was cutting edge as recently as the turn of the year, but this industry moves fast. The aforementioned rival handsets run on the newer Snapdragon 801, while late-2014 handsets are set to jump to the markedly superior Snapdragon 805 chip.

Of course, all of these phones will run high-end games well right now. But if you're committing to a two year contract now (or in six months time, as may be the case with the Fire Phone), you want a phone that can handle the high-end games of 2016.

Then consider the display which, while bright and well-sized at 4.7-inches, isn't as sharp as its Android rivals. With the smartphone world seemingly going 1080p and beyond, Amazon has created a 720p smartphone.

Future games may run okay, but they may not look as good as they could as developers create sharper assets.

While the Fire Phone will run on a modified version of the Android OS, it won't have access to the Google Play Store, so you'll be stuck with the relatively slim pickings of the Amazon Appstore.

Amazon recently boasted of hitting 240,000 apps in its Appstore. While that represents an impressive tripling over the past year, that's still less than a quarter of the apps available on the iOS App Store and Google Play shop for Android.

Games seem to suffer just like normal apps. Some of the recent highlights of the Android game roster, like Kiwanuka, Dragon Quest VIII, and Hitman GO are nowhere to be seen on the Amazon Appstore.

Put simply, if games are a big factor when you're buying a smartphone - and as you're here, I presume they must be - then your choice is iPhone or Android. The Fire Phone doesn't really come into the equation.

If you're dreaming of giving the Fire Phone a chance based on dreams of an innovative Nintendo 3DS-like 3D gaming future, well, snap out of it.

While the Fire Phone's Dynamic Perspective system can track your head movement to grant a neat (but seemingly gimmicky) 3D effect, it will likely see limited application in the world of gaming.

The Fire Phone's limited roll-out, weak app store, and high price point means that it's unlikely to be a phenomenal worldwide sales success. And it would need to be that in order for major developers to commit to creating dedicated games that make the most of this unique hardware feature.

Of course, Amazon has been buying up its own development talent, which could always be put to work creating some unique Fire Phone games. But these would be the exception rather than the rule - at least for the foreseeable future.