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Amazon stops selling the Fire Phone

After roughly a year of dismal sales (and the resulting steep discounts), Amazon's Fire Phone is no more. The internet retailer has confirmed to GeekWire that it sold its remaining stock of the Fire OS-powered smartphone at the end of August. There's no mention of whether or not this is a sign of a sequel -- the more successful Fire TV is also sold out, we'd note -- but you shouldn't count on it. Reports claim that Amazon is chopping both future phones and other hardware projects as a result of the Fire Phone's failure, so this will likely join the annals of one-and-done flops like the HTC First and Microsoft's Kin series.

This is an ignominious end to what was supposed to be Amazon's triumphant moment, but it wasn't hard to predict even when the Fire Phone was fresh. The centerpiece Dynamic Perspective feature (which altered the on-screen content depending on your gaze) was widely considered a novelty. Moreover, the heavily customized Android interface that did reasonably well on Fire tablets was unintuitive and limiting here. It was designed to boost Amazon's sales (Firefly object scanning, anyone?), not to help you use your phone. Combine these with slightly behind-the-times specs, poor battery life, a limited app ecosystem and an AT&T exclusive, and it was hard to justify a Fire Phone in favor of the many more practical alternatives.