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How to disable Dynamic Perspective on the Fire Phone

You'll be surprised at the performance improvement after disabling one of the Fire Phone's flagship features.

Jason Cipriani Contributing Writer, ZDNet
Jason Cipriani is based out of beautiful Colorado and has been covering mobile technology news and reviewing the latest gadgets for the last six years. His work can also be found on sister site CNET in the How To section, as well as across several more online publications.
Jason Cipriani
2 min read

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When Amazon's CEO Jeff Bezos announced its first smartphone, the Fire, he discussed how much time and effort his team had put into perfecting a new feature called Dynamic Perspective.

Bezos explained how the three-dimensional interface made possible by four front-facing cameras offered a new method of interacting with a smartphone. He was right, but unfortunately for some, the stuttering and lag caused by the extra resources the feature requires and the poor user experience it leads to will be a big distraction.

Amazon has provided an option for disabling the feature, although you'll be hard-pressed to find it at first. So if you're tired of waiting for the lock screen to show up, or notification badges to reset, here's what you need to do.

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Screenshot by Jason Cipriani/CNET

First, open up Settings on your Fire Phone and type "low" into the search bar at the top of the screen. Alternatively, you can tap on the Display listing. When you see the "Configure low motion settings" option appear, tap on it.

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Screenshot by Jason Cipriani/CNET

Next you have a few decisions to make. There's more to Dynamic Perspective than meets the eye (pun intended), such as gestures. You can either disable Dynamic Perspective and gestures as a whole by sliding the Low Motion Mode switch to the off position, or you can disable Dynamic Perspective (which in turn only disables Peek and Autoscroll), leaving Tilt and Swivel enabled. Disabling Peek means you'll need to enable the status bar (Settings > Display > Show status bar), allowing it to be permanently displayed.

Play around with the settings and find a combination of features that works best for you, but doesn't degrade the overall experience of the Fire. Sure, having the screen of your phone change based on your viewing angle is cool, but when it takes 5 seconds to unlock, is it really worth it? In short, no.