Amazon Is Removing Voice Services From My Phone

[petecal]

I just got an email that amazon will remove Voice Services from my phone on September 30. That is tomorrow!!!
How dare they do that?
It is my phone. How can they take an app off my phone.
They have to be stopped from doing that.

Even though the damn thing works only half the time.
I bet they were getting too many "help" calls.
So, let them drop support.
But removing something from my personal phone.....that is too over the top!

 

[mikedt]

Amazon? What phone have you actually got there, a Fire Phone or some other FireOS Kindle device? Are Amazon actually killing software on your device, or discontinuing something that they provide on their servers, i.e. in their cloud.

 

[petecal]

It is a 100% FirePhone. A cellphone. I have been running it without "the cloud" but that is just a switch. It works just as well (crappy actually but better then nothing) .
Amazon is going to remove it from my phone the email says.

 

[mikedt]

So even though this Fire Phone is your personal property, and they've long since discontinued it, they're actually going to push out something via OTA that disables it for voice calls? Which is very bad indeed. Anyway to stop it communicating with Amazon's servers and receiving things from them?

Would be interesting to see if there's any other remaining Fire Phone users having the same thing happening.

 

[zuben el genub]

Since it is an Amazon phone, they can do it. However, there must be other users of the Fire phone who have the same problem.

I'd contact Amazon and see it they have a resolution. Cutting someone's sole means of calling off if account is current would be bad publicity.

Is Amazon its own carrier? If you have a regular carrier like the big 4, prepaid, postpaid or MNVO, contact them, too.

It could also be the supported bands on the phone. TMO at least is repurposing some bands to LTE and some users phones don't seem to have the choice for LTE. I'm with TMO so I can't answer for any other carrier.

The Fire Phone died in 2015. Amazon is doing a new phone, but apparently for India first.

 

[mikedt]

Since it is an Amazon phone, they can do it. However, there must be other users of the Fire phone who have the same problem.

Oh yeh they can do it. But IMO leaves a very bad taste in one's mouth with them remotely killing user's personal property like that, and may adversely affect future decisions about buying Amazon exclusive products.

I'd contact Amazon and see it they have a resolution. Cutting someone's sole means of calling off if account is current would be bad publicity.

Is Amazon its own carrier? If you have a regular carrier like the big 4, prepaid, postpaid or MNVO, contact them, too.

The Fire Phone was exclusive to AT&T in the US, and O2 in the UK. That was a major criticism of it at the time, and possibly one of the reasons why it failed. It was expensive up-front and it had a mandatory stiff two year contract.

 

[zuben el genub]

I think ATT also might be doing some repurposing for LTE. If the phone doesn't support 4g or HSPA the phone could very well be passe.

Those that make smart phones need to realize that some people do need plain voice over whatever band. Not everyone wants VOLTE. I have no idea what will happen to the plain flip phones like the Vulcan prefers (has no choices)

Voice isn't critical - they'd rather use an app like Skype, Face talk etc.