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Amazon updates Fire phone to translate text and identify art in photos

Amazon SVP of Devices David Limp promised back in October that the company will continue releasing updates for the Fire phone despite its rather poor performance -- like this big software upgrade, for instance. The latest version of Fire phone's OS comes with a long list of new features, including the ability to translate text and identify artwork (well, anything included in its 2,000-piece catalog, anyway) in photos using Firefly. Plus, there's a new camera mode called Best Shot that saves three versions of each captured photo, so you can choose the best one.

You can also start blocking phone numbers, selecting more keyboard languages, disabling MMS character count, editing documents in the preloaded WPS Office app and connecting to a VPN. Want to sync calendars across Amazon devices, view more info on the lock screen and scroll through Kindle books using gestures? You can do all those, as well. The update's available for both the AT&T device and the unlocked GSM version, which, by the way, is now priced at half the $449 it used to cost -- just sayin', in case you want to relieve the company of one of the many, many phones it can't sell.