In September 2023, Amazon announced the Echo Show 8 Photos Edition. It looked exactly like the regular Echo Show 8 display/smart speaker but cost $10 more. Why? Because it could display photos on the home screen for as long as you wanted — if you signed up for a $2 monthly subscription to Amazon’s PhotosPlus service. Now, about a year after the Echo Show 8 Photos Edition launched, Amazon is announcing that it will discontinue PhotosPlus. That means Echo Show 8 Photos Edition users will be forced to see ads instead of their favorite photos.
As is The Edge Yesterday, Amazon started sending out emails to PhotosPlus subscribers. Emails Amazon said it will automatically cancel all PhotosPlus subscriptions on September 12 and will stop supporting PhotosPlus starting September 23. According to Amazon’s message, PhotosPlus “makes photos the primary content of the Home screen you see on the Echo Show 8 and includes 25GB of storage with Amazon Photos.” Amazon Online Photo Storage Users can continue using the 25GB of Amazon Photos storage after September.
However, users will no longer be able to make photos the unselected home screen on the Alexa gadget. After September, their devices will no longer have the “Photo Forwarding Mode” that Amazon announced for the Echo Show 8 Photos Edition. Photo Forwarding Mode, according to Amazon, allows people to make “selected personal photos the primary rotating content on the ambient display” (photos rotate every 30 seconds). Now, the Echo Show 8 Photo Editions will function like the regular Echo Show 8 and will default to ads and promotions after three hours.
“The end of my Echo Show 8”
Amazon never explained why owners of the standard Echo Show 8 couldn’t use PhotosPlus or Photo Forwarding mode. The hardware was exactly the same. It’s possible that the Photos Edition used additional hardware, but the $10 premium for the Photos Edition was likely intended to make up for lost ad revenue.
But now people who bought the Photos Edition may feel like they’ve been scammed. After paying an extra $10 for a device that can endlessly display photos instead of ads, they’ll be forced to experience the same user experience as the cheaper Echo Show 8.
“I really don’t want to keep it if it’s going to show ads all day,” Reddit user Misschiff0 He said In response to the news, “Unfortunately, this is the end of my Echo Show 8.”
Other customers have discussed abandoning the Echo line entirely in response to the changes. As Reddit user Raybreezer wrote:
I’m dying to get a replacement smart home speaker with a non-Google screen. Every day I hate the Echo. [sic] Line more and more.
Selling PhotosPlus has always been a tough sell.
Amazon probably makes more money selling ads than it does selling PhotosPlus subscriptions and related devices. It was a bit odd that PhotosPlus only applied to one Amazon device. Amazon may have been considering expanding PhotosPlus to other devices but it hasn’t gotten much attention or money from the project. It seems hard to convince people to pay monthly for a feature that some say the device should already support.
Amazon spokeswoman Courtney Ramirez told The Verge that Amazon discontinued the Echo Show 8 Photos Edition in March, noting that Amazon regularly evaluates “products and services based on customer feedback” and that users can still get the Echo Show 8 Photos Edition to display photos.
But it’s hard to ignore that Amazon discontinued a product after just about six months and then discontinued the device’s exclusivity feature just a year after its launch. The short-lived Echo Show 8 Photos Edition and PhotosPlus join Amazon’s gadget graveyard, which includes the discontinued Astro business robot, Just Walk Out, Amazon Glow, Fire Phone, Dash buttons, and Amazon smart oven.
Amazon’s rapid discontinuation of smart displays and PhotosPlus is emblematic of its struggle to find a profitable purpose and significant revenue stream for Alexa-powered devices. Reports have claimed that Alexa has had no timeline for profitability for years and has cost Amazon tens of billions of dollars.
Amazon is banking on the next version of Alexa’s generative AI being so good that people will pay a subscription fee to use it. But with competition so intense, generative AI applications vary in accuracy and relevance, and some consumers are already closed With the AI marketing hype for consumer gadgets, it will be hard for Amazon to shake things up. And the fact that a high-priced Alexa device is losing its main feature after a year doesn’t inspire confidence in Amazon’s future products either.
