At 99 Cents, the Fire Phone Is a Super-Cheap Way to Get Amazon Prime

Ariel Zambelich/WIRED

The Amazon Fire Phone isn’t a bad phone. It’s just not worth $200. But how about if only cost you a buck?

Amazon’s first foray into the smartphone market launched a little over a month ago. And while it suffered from a smaller app ecosystem and a strange focus on holograms-’n’-shoppin’, it’s a solid phone. Its shortcomings did make it a tough sell at $200 on a two-year contract with AT&T. But now Fire Phone’s price has dropped to a dollar with that same two-year contract, and it’s quite a bit more compelling.

Here’s a big reason why: Even at the drop to 99 cents that Amazon announced today. the Fire Phone includes a free year of Amazon Prime. Along with streaming-video services for a year, free two-day shipping for items you buy on Amazon, and access to Amazon’s Prime Music streaming service, the Fire Phone also has HDX-like perks such as downloadable videos for offline viewing. A Prime membership normally costs $100 per year, so the savings are significant. If you’ve already subscribed to Prime, the company tacks on another year of service when you buy the phone.

The Fire Phone also has a couple more traits that make it worth considering at that much-cheaper price. You get free cloud storage from Amazon for all the photos you shoot with the phone’s camera, and you get 24/7 live help over video through its Mayday service.

Along with all that, you’re essentially getting a free phone with free Prime services. Separately, those things combined to cost $300 before today. The Fire Phone’s sub-dollar deal is for the 32GB model with a two-year AT&T contract through Amazon.