The hardware specs were significantly behind what was standard on Androids of the time. Fire phones had only a slight price differentiation ($0.99 on a 2 year contract versus $199 for a Samsung Galaxy with a 1080p screen) and there were no commission incentives to push them, which made these a nonstarter.
oh, definitely. When I was first shown it I assumed it was a test model (it was common to get test models with big ugly casing pre-launch so any photos leaked looked didn't have much to go on), but nope, the big ugly thing was what shipped...