Amazon Fire Smartphone - All Hat, No Cattle

Amazon announces the Fire, its first-ever smartphone. Hey, I like Amazon. Amazon is a friend of mine. I buy stuff on Amazon all the time. But, Amazon Fire, you're not a great smartphone. I remember buying a cheap tablet once for one of the kids to play with. It had no access to the Google Play Store, and thus no way to load the most useful Google Apps, as well as no access to thousands of great Android apps. Sure, you could use a complicated side-loading process, and there are other app stores out there; but, the Googleverse is an essential part of the mobile ethos. Without it, your device is brain dead from the start. So, the fire may be a nice box; but, without access to my favorite Google apps, it is dead to me.