The American international electronic commerce company, Amazon just released its first smartphone called the Fire phone. The phone features a heavily customized version of Android that is similar to the operating system on Amazon’s Kindle Fire tablet lineup, and apps are made available through the company’s own Amazon Appstore. Some of the basic features includes:
- 4.7-inch screen
- 13-megapixel camera with optical image stabilization
- 2.2-GHz processor with 2GB of RAM
- Gorilla Glass on both sides
- Starts at $199 on a two-year contract according to AT&T’s Website
- Starts at $649 off-contract according to Amazon’s website
- Launches July 25
- Exclusive to AT&T
Amazon CEO, Jeff Bezos showed off a built-in feature called Firefly, which can recognize images, products, text and audio and connect smartphone users with a way to buy those items.
Firefly recognizes more than a hundred million items, Amazon said. There is a dedicated Firefly button on the side of the phone. Firefly also works with voice activation, can recognize music and identify artwork, Web and email addresses, phone numbers and QR and bar codes. The Amazon phone screen has an interface called Dynamic Perspective to adjust the a 3D image on the screen to match users’ head position. Lockscreens and wall papers have a 3D effect. Bezos demonstrated on stage how the device could render a building on a map in 3D. The building – the Empire State, to be exact – looked like it was coming out of the Amazon phone’s screen, and moved as the user moved.
Following in line with the Kindle tablets, the phone features a dedicated Mayday button to connect to customer support. It will work over Wi-Fi, 3G and 4G, and is free. Because video is so tied to the Amazon experience, the company has included a number of video features with its first handset. IMDB’s X-Ray is headed to the Fire Phone, and Second Screen lets uses Miracast video from their Fire phone to their FireTV.
By the numbers, Firefly recognizes 245,00 movies and TV episodes, 160 live TV channels and 35 million songs. It can supposedly ID 70 million items (over 100 million all told), such as books, DVDs, video games and CDs, and even work around issues like folds, glare and curves. Users can then read product details for these items, add them to their Wish List, and order them on Amazon.com.
Click here to watch the full review by Jeff Bezos at the Amazon Press Conference.
