Matter of concern: For now, Amazon Fire phone will not connect to wearables

In the year 2014, we have seen a significant elevation in the set of features we expect from smartphones. With the likes of the Moto and  Canvas series, even entry-level phones have been offering excellent specs at affordable price points. After spending two years in development, Amazon’ s fruit of labour has its all - from solid hardware to eye-catching features. So, it is quite surprising that the company opted for Bluetooth 3.0 over the latest 4.0 version in the smartphone.

Amazon Fire has been launched with support for Bluetooth 3.0 with EDR. This means it won’t support the slew of wearables that have been thrown into the market.  The company has said that it will support Bluetooth 4.0 in the next update, but even then this missing feature doesn’t bode too well for the new phone.

The latest development in Bluetooth - Bluetooth LE - connects devices without requiring too much power. It is also going to be a crucial part of the upcoming tech innovations including home automation, smartwatches, health trackers and others. While we talk of wearables being the next big thing, it is quite disappointing that Amazon seems to show no love for this product category, yet. Several tech crictics have already begun pointing out this flaw.

“You might want to hold off buying a Fire Phone if you’re really into wearable tech. It’s true that most older fitness trackers and smartwatches support standard Bluetooth, albeit with much worse battery profiles, but the current generation of devices is already starting to require Bluetooth Smart support. You can bet that most future devices will require more advanced Bluetooth too,” said Mashable’s Christina Warren.

“This (lack of Bluetooth LE) is going to be a huge negative for anyone who owns (or is thinking about buying) wearables, since many of them rely on Bluetooth LE to connect to the phone. For a flagship product launching in 2014, this was a bit of a surprise,” Engadget’s Brad Molen pointed out in his hand on with the device.

And it’s not like Amazon is not selling wearables on the website. “The company talks a lot about being customer-centric — but with this decision, it seems to have overlooked a very popular trend. In fact, Fitbit Flex is one of Amazon’s best-sellers across departments. In fact, it’s No. 29 on the bestseller list in the entire Health and Personal Care category,” adds Warren.

Now, Bluetooth got a slightly delayed entry in the Android world, but it has become a standard feature since almost 2011. “Not including Bluetooth LE isn’t entirely unprecedented — it wasn’t included in Android up until version 4.3 Jelly Bean, released just under a year ago — but with its wide support, it’s now a far more glaring omission,” adds Jacob Kastrenakes from The Verge .

For Amazon, the decision once again shows that where this smartphone is concerned, it’s aimed at getting users to shop more rather. You can check out our full specs review here.