In September 2023, Amazon announced the Echo Show 8 Photos Edition. It looked exactly like the regular Echo Show 8 smart display/speaker, but cost $10 more. Why? Because it can display photos on the home screen for as long as you want—if you take out a monthly Amazon PhotosPlus subscription for $2. Now, about a year after the Echo Show 8 Photos Edition was released, Amazon is announcing that PhotosPlus is being discontinued. This means Echo Show 8 Photos Edition users will be forced to see ads instead of their beloved pictures.
As The Verge reported yesterday, Amazon has started sending emails to PhotosPlus subscribers announcing that all PhotosPlus subscriptions will be automatically canceled on September 12, and support for PhotosPlus will end on September 23. PhotosPlus, according to Amazon's announcement, “makes photos the primary home screen content you see on your Echo Show 8 and includes 25GB of storage with Amazon Photos,” Amazon's online photo storage offering. Users can continue to use the 25GB Amazon Photos storage after September.
However, users will no longer be able to make photos the Alexa device's perpetual home screen. After September, their devices will no longer have the “photo forwarding mode” that Amazon promoted for the Echo Show 8 Photos Edition. Photo forwarding mode allows “select personal photos to be made the primary rotating content on the ambient screen,” according to Amazon (photos rotate every 30 seconds). Now, Echo Show 8 Photo Editions will function like a regular Echo Show 8, showing ads and promotions after three hours by default.
“The end of my Echo Show 8”
Amazon never explained why owners of the standard Echo Show 8 couldn't use PhotosPlus or the photo-sharing mode. The devices looked identical. It's possible that the Photos Edition used additional hardware, but it's likely that the $10 premium for the Photos Edition was intended to make up for lost ad revenue.
But now, buyers of the Photos Edition may feel like victims of a loss leader. After paying an extra $10 to get a device that can display unlimited photos instead of ads, they are forced to have the same user experience as the cheaper Echo Show 8.
“I really have no interest in keeping it if it's going to show ads all day,” Reddit user Misschiff0 said in response to the news. “Sadly, this is the end of my Echo Show 8.”
Other customers have apparently discussed abandoning the Echo line altogether in response to the changes. As Reddit user Raybreezer wrote:
I'm dying for a replacement smart home speaker with a non-Google screen. I hate the Echo every day [sic] Line more and more.
PhotosPlus was always difficult to sell
Amazon may make more money selling ads than it does selling PhotosPlus subscriptions and the hardware that goes with them. It's always been a little odd that PhotosPlus was only for one Amazon device. Amazon may have considered expanding PhotosPlus to other devices but didn't get enough interest or money out of the venture. It seems difficult to get people to pay monthly for a feature that some people think the device should already support as standard.
Amazon spokeswoman Courtney Ramirez told The Verge that Amazon stopped producing the Echo Show 8 Photos Edition in March. She noted that Amazon regularly evaluates “products and services based on customer feedback” and that users can still use their Echo Show 8 Photos Editions to view photos.
But it's hard to ignore Amazon discontinuing a product after only about six months and then locking down the device's exclusive feature just a year after release. The short-lived Echo Show 8 Photos Edition and PhotosPlus service join Amazon's device graveyard, which also includes the discontinued Astro Business robot, Just Walk Out, Amazon Glow, Fire Phone, Dash Buttons, and the Amazon Smart Oven.
Amazon's quick discontinuation of the Smart Display and PhotosPlus is emblematic of the company's struggle to find a lucrative purpose and meaningful revenue stream for Alexa devices. For years, there was reportedly no timeline for maximizing Alexa's profits, costing Amazon tens of billions of dollars.
Amazon is betting that its upcoming generative AI version of Alexa will be so good that people will be willing to pay a subscription to use it. But given the stiff competition, the varying accuracy and relevance of generative AI implementations, and the fact that some consumers have already been turned off by the AI marketing hype around consumer devices, it will be hard for Amazon to turn things around. A high-priced Alexa device that loses its core function after a year doesn't inspire confidence in future Amazon products either.