Amazon is bricking primary feature on $160 Echo device after 1 year

Man, Amazon is giving Google a run for their money on enshittification and product cancellation.

This is more hilarious because the spy device not only cost more for the ability to show you photos, but it ALSO had a subscription fee to do so on top of that.

I'm completely befuddled as to what the hell they were thinking, and why they think replacing family pictures with more ads is somehow going to make people do anything other than Ron Swanson these stupid things into the nearest dumpster.

So I bought one of Spotify's Car Things when they were flushing them after realizing nobody knew fuck all about them.

The device itself works alright for it's purpose, but is basically just a fancy way to change tracks or answer your phone. There's no GPS or messaging integration that you'd get with CarPlay. It doesn't even tell the time. Still, it works and is useful.

A few months ago, Spotify sent out emails that, as of December, they will be bricking all of them and to dispose of them via whatever recycling service you have.

Pretty shitty that we've entered an era where companies can just destroy something you paid for because they want to... There need to be laws against this.

We have an older Echo Show in the kitchen. I hate it. It’s genuinely one of the single most ill-conceived, user-unfriendly products I’ve ever experienced. It’s straight up dog shit.

My wife originally picked it up because Amazon were flogging them for something like £30 as a loss-leader. Figured it would make a useful bedside clock and smart speaker in one. It’s a shitty clock, and absolutely fucking useless on the bedside because it keeps flashing shit up in the dark. You can’t load any photos on to it, so you’re stuck looking at whatever artwork/“tips”/ads it wants to show you.

I don’t understand how Amazon created a device that looks like a little picture frame, that would be an ideal bedside clock, and apparently at no point did they consider that people might want to use it like that.

We since got a Google thing that’s essentially the same device (free with an energy tariff), and y’know, Google did a good job with that thing. Just sits in the bedroom being a clock and smart speaker, dimming nicely when the lights are out, never advertising shit at us.

I use it as a Bluetooth speaker, which also sucks because it’ll randomly refuse to disconnect from my phone even though I did it through my phone’s settings. It’ll be disconnected, then I’ll be sat in the lounge and I’ll hear it reconnect, like some kind of cunt.

And they’ve programmed it to talk ALL THE FUCKING TIME. “NOW CONNECTED TO YOUR PHONE”. Yes, I fucking know it is, I just told you to do that.

It is legitimately the worst bit of tech I’ve ever used, and I’ve used a Virgin Media cable TV box.

A $2/mo subscription for a fucking screensaver?!

In September of 2023, Amazon announced the Echo Show 8 Photos Edition. It looked just like the regular Echo Show 8 smart display/speaker but cost $10 more. Why? Because of its ability to show photos on the home screen for as long as you want—if you signed up for a $2 monthly subscription to Amazon's PhotosPlus. Now, about a year after releasing the Echo Show 8 Photos Edition, Amazon is announcing that it's discontinuing PhotosPlus. That means Echo Show 8 Photos Edition users will be forced to see ads instead of their beloved pics.

Oh look, more e-waste.

That device has gullible written all over it.

time to open fraud complaints with your credit card company

Just as a little tip, in the US if you switch your Echo's language to US-CAN it displays way less ads :)

This is a good reason not to buy a kindle, or another one if you have one already. If they're doing this they'll just as easily steal the books I bought when they randomly decide to.

The description of that device and subscription is so fucking stupid I'm not even mad. If you fell for it that hard, you deserve whatever they throw at you.

Crap like this is why I stopped buying things.

You shouldn't need a fucking subscription to display your photos on your hardware.

A picture frame with ads? My god Jim

Here's to hoping the development of a good local replacement from Home Assistant. Like the Lenovo teams screen thing.

mhm, is there a way to root the echo show?

Unless the ads are being served by the same server as the photos, this is probably trivial to block using a Pi-Hole or other type of network-level ad-blocker.

I do wonder if it's unable to pull up ads, if it just reverts back to showing photos. Would love to get one secondhand to test it out. Sure as shit never going to pay for one.

Huh, I never knew this existed, or I might have bought a couple.

I’ve been thinking of digital picture frames both for myself, as my kids go off to college, and my Mom, as her grandkids go to college. However I’ve never been happy with how easy they are to manage

• I want mine to just work, and incorporate new pictures as I take them
• my Mom is not very tech savvy, so it really has to just work regardless of what she does, plus I need to be able to update it remotely

I see a variety of digital pictures frames and see how they try to make updating them easy, but I don’t see why they’re not completely automatic.

My phone automatically detects faces as I take pictures: I have a kids album that’s automatically updated whenever I take a photo of my kids. That’s how easy I want it

Don't worry the rest of the echoes Will be on the chopping block next. The product doesn't make them enough money.

I have a couple of 8 in and a 5-in show who's sole purpose in life is to display whoever just rang my Eufy doorbell.

I can't say that I've ever noticed an ad on them I'm sure they're there I just don't spend any time looking at them.

I've stopped using them for shopping lists. Other than occasionally asking what the weather is today or the kids asking them how to spell a word, we hardly use them.

I use my smartwatch for timers. I do have a couple of smart bulbs in the bedroom and use it to turn off the lights but again I never look at it.

Should be allowed to return products at a full refund when they do something like this, and for an additional 25% value in a gift card for the inconvenience.

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