[Amazon Fire Phone] eksasol:
I posted this an another forum, but couldn't generate much discussion. I'm hoping to get some input on this topic. Lately, I've been transitioning to getting most of my apps from Amazon Appstore instead of Google Playstore. I need to make a distinction here, I'm not a fan of Fire OS, just their Appstore experience. Here are some of the reasons why I prefer Amazon Appstore, remember these are my personal experience, you don't have to agree to them:

-Free apps. Playstore have free stuff once a while, but there are so much give away by Amazon and good ones too.

-Coins. Initially I thought the concept of coins were stupid and redundant, but if you have kids or have a single family account that are accessed by multiple person/devices, coins are very useful. You don't need to add credit card info or buy physical gift cards to redeem money, just gift that account some coins and it can purchase apps and online contents. It's a good way to avoid overspending. Also sometimes you get coins bonus from purchases.

-Alphabetic list of apps you purchased and downloaded. IMO, Google purposefully do not list your purchased apps by alphabetic orders so it is harder to search and remember them after you have too many apps, which results in buying more apps. I spent about $500 total for apps and in app purchases over the years on PlayStore, when I want to look through all the apps I bought I have to scroll through a long list of apps completely unsorted. I am aware there are third party apps that can sort Playstore apps, but they are can have bugs when there are updates and are not integrated, I don't want to use them.

-No "license key apps" or "unlocked pro features apps". Sometimes on Playstore when you download a free app, if you want to unlock the pro features you also have to download the license key app, which is not an app in itself, but only serve the purpose of unlocking the pro features. I'm not a fan of this and it's clumsy design imo. It seems Amazon doesn't allow this and instead have them as in app purchases. I actually like the IAP implementation by Amazon, you can disable IAP all together, which is useful if you have kids or just hate IAPs. I'm actually not sure if Playstore have PIN code for quick purchases, I remember that option used to exist in the older Playstore versions, but it's convenient to make Amazon purchases with a PIN.

-Does not require joining social network to review apps or sync your games. It is ludicrous that Google required you to join Google+ to review Playstore apps or use "Play Games" feature. Amazon have game syncing features that keep scores and savegames as well, you only need to log into your Amazon account. I don't want Google+ enable for my private email, but I already purchased many Playstore contents on it, so I'll have to continue to use it, unless Google allows me to transfer all my Playstore purchases from one email to another.

-Lastly, this might sound stupid, but it have it's benefits. With Amazon Appstore, you can access to your apps on both Android and Amazon devices. The key difference here is unlike trying to get a Google services to work on a Kindle devices, vice versa you don't have to do any hackery or unsupported trials to get Amazon Appstore to work on Android devices, it just work immediately after sideloading.

I think the biggest factor for me is due to the free apps and coins bonuses, I feel more rewarded when using Amazon Appstore than Playstore. Currently, I do not root my phone any longer, I don't bother with kernel tweaking, that significantly reduces my reliance on the Google Playstore since most of the root apps are there. Except for a few apps, pretty much Playstore is only used for updating Google apps on my Android phone now. One thing that I still feel missing from both stock Android and Fire OS are permission management (without rooting), which why I'm still using CyanogenMod for the Privacy Guard feature.

As for the Fire Phone. I've watched some reviews on this phone, but all of them are from hardcore Android users, so there isn't a bias free view on it. I think Fire OS interface is still dreadful, I've read the bad reviews, but I still want to try it myself. I figure for $100 unlocked (subtract the one year free Prime membership) it'll make a good backup phone considering it have similar specs to the Nexus 5 (except 1080p) which cost 3 times as much. This is not my daily phone, I have multiple other Android phones currently so it's not like I'm limiting myself.