[Amazon Fire Phone] cameroncr95:
(Sorry in advance for the super long post) :(

So, I bought an ATT Unlocked 32GB Fire Phone new for only $80 (free shipping) on Ebay and I've been using it for exactly one week now, and my experience has been so-so. I LOVED the fireos UI on the kindle fire tablets but once I started using it on the smaller screen with the fire phone, I found it to be very cluttered, inefficient, and none of my side loaded apps show up in the UI.

So, two days in I hacked play store and 1mobile market onto the phone and downloaded ZenUi launcher from Asus (which works fantastic on Fire Phone), and now I've been liking the general UI experience. But I've been having a few other minor annoyances about this phone, mostly related to things simply not working.

Heres my biggest annoyance: The facebook suite of apps hardly work. This is a problem for me, because my friends and family, all of them communicate over Facebook, and since Facebook thinks its such a FANTASTIC idea to force you to have messenger to read and send messages (no more messaging through the mobile site), I pretty much HAVE to have messenger. My problem though, is that the facebook app crashes alot on Fire Phone, and messenger is doing the same thing. I had to download all of these through play store because the normal Facebook app isn't even on Amazon App Store, and the messenger app is several versions outdated on the store (apparently they abandoned the platform?), So now, I am basically fighting these to apps to work.

Another problem is Play Services. I am not sure whats going on, but no matter what guide I follow (the one here on XDA, the one on spinyourfire and the one on rootjunkies), after a few resets or after just a few days, play services "break" and any and all apps relying on play services (like snapchat, google apps, etc) refuse to work. So when that happens, I have to purge it all relating to Google and redownload. This is REALLY annoying, because Snapchat is another app I use alot for communications and since Play Services keeps doing this, its becoming really difficult.

Tumblr isn't working either. I guess since the browser version works just fine and unlike facebook you aren't required to have their apps, thats not a MAJOR problem. Now, several other communication apps that I HAVE to sideload, like Badoo, OOvoo and some other chat apps aren't working either no matter what I try.

This being a "Communication" device, I am having a very hard time "Communicating" when this is happening. This is really making me upset because I absolutely LOVE the design of the device, the camera is acceptable, I LOVE firefly and the 3D support, and the specs for the price are fantastic. (How many phones have NFC, 3D, good cameras, 32GB ON BOARD space for $80 new?), but with all these problems, I am highly considering sending the phone back to the vendor and buying something else, and I really don't want to! Games run GREAT on here, like GTA Sanandreas, Sims Freeplay, and Fallout Shelter. The camera works great and like I said, I already am in love with Firefly. But I am upset that all the essential apps pretty much need sideloaded since it seems everyone is abandoning Fire Phone, and side loading isn't working.

I should also mention that I did try CM11 and pretty much right away switched back to fireOS because the cameras were not working. Does anyone have any suggestions for me? Thank you!