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Amazon’s Fire Phone doesn’t include Bluetooth LE, and that’s bad news for wearables

19
Jun
2014

For its first attempt at a smartphone, Amazons Fire Phone includes a lot of interesting features — but it also left out one surprising one: support for Bluetooth LE, the type of connectivity thats made wearables like smartwatches and fitness trackers so powerful lately. Mashable first pointed out the strange omission, noting that itll be bad news for anyone who wants to use buy a Fire Phone and regularly use a wearable. It doesnt mean that itll be impossible, but youre likely to see a lot more issues with battery life, which Bluetooth LE mitigates most issues with (the LE stands for low-energy, after all). The absence of Bluetooth LE support also means that products designed specifically for the standard wont be able to connect with the Fire Phone at all. Some wearables account for that potential absence and can fall back on earlier version of Bluetooth to work just fine, and others dont support Bluetooth LE at all and manage well enough too, such as the initial version of the Pebble smartwatch (support for it was added in later, however).

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