Yep, it's a phone alright. Amazon officially unveiled the Fire Phone today at a special press event held in Seattle.
Yep, it's a phone alright. Amazon officially unveiled the Fire Phone today at a special press event held in Seattle. Consistent with the rumors, Amazon's first ever phone has a 4.7-inch Gorilla Glass display with a HD resolution screen (we're assuming it's 720p). That makes it the same size as the Moto X, which was also supposed to be a phone for the masses. It also has a rubberized frame with aluminium buttons, a quad-core 2.2GHz processor, Adreno 330 GPU and 2GB of RAM. As for the camera, there's a 13-megapixel rear-facing one equipped with a f/2.0 lens and optical image stabilization. The phone's display will have 590 nits of brightness, dynamic image contrast and a "circular polarizer," though we're not entirely clear on what that means yet. There's also a dedicated camera key and luckily for all you amateur photogs, it'll come with unlimited cloud storage for photos as well. It's available exclusively from AT&T for $199 if you want the 32GB version, or $299 if you prefer the 64GB. If you'd rather go off-contract instead, you can get phone directly from Amazon for $649 for 32GB and $749 for 64GB.
As for sound, the Fire Phone touts dual stereo speakers along with support for virtualDolby Digital Plus surround sound. It comes with earphones with tangle-free flat cables plus magnetic earbuds that clasp together. As you might expect, there are a boatload of entertainment-centric features too. There's Xray on the phone for 2nd screen functionality, ASAP support and the ability to fling videos to Miracast devices (like, you know, that Fire TV). Obviously it also supports all of the Prime offerings like Music and Video, plus you'll get Audible, the Kindle Newsstand and Comixology as well.
Stating how it's difficult to use phones these days, Bezos also announced that Mayday will be coming to the Fire Phone. That's the 24 / 7, 365 days a year live customer servicesupport that the Kindle Fire has as well. Bezos said that Mayday will take less than 15 seconds to answer and will work over 3G/4G as well as WiFi. And, most importantly, it's free.
Here's something new: the Fire Phone will also ship with something called Firefly. It's a feature that uses the phone's camera to recognize books, DVDs, phone numbers, QR codes, CDs, URLs, games, bar codes and more. It also uses the phone's microphone to listen to songs too. If it detects an item, you can quickly tap a button to purchase it from Amazon. Firefly can also recognize art. It pulled up a Wikipedia entry for Cornflowers by Sergei Osipov, as well as Man with Red Hat by Vitrtore Carpaccio. Indeed, it recognizes over a hundred million items, including street signs. It's such a key service to the Fire Phone that there'll even be a dedicated Firefly button.
Saving the best for last, Bezos also announced that the Fire Phone will indeed have a 3D interface. But unlike other 3D phones, that 3D interface will follow you around thanks to Fire Phone's unique head-tracking system that he calls Dynamic Perspective. It uses four cameras to do so, each with a 120-degree field of view and infrared light. They use a global shutter instead of a rolling shutter.
In a demo on stage, he showed that it changes a picture's view as you move around. You can tilt the phone around and peek underneath blockages on maps, or go forward and backward in a slideshow. It also works in a web browser, a la Smart Scroll on Samsung phones. A small tilt will let it scroll slowly, a larger one will have it scroll faster. The same mechanic also applies to e-books. You can play games by tilting the phone around too.
The app grid also inherits much of the same navigation mechanic. You can either choose to have a carousel style grid similar to the Kindle tablets, or a more Android-like look. The carousel version is slightly enhanced from the tablet version -- you'll be able to see the first few emails without having to launch the mail app, and the latest pictures of the camera app. The Music app has a three-panel design that consists of navigation on the left, album art and controls in the middle plus lyrics on the right.
Stating how it's difficult to use phones these days, Bezos also announced that Mayday will be coming to the Fire Phone. That's the 24 / 7, 365 days a year live customer servicesupport that the Kindle Fire has as well. Bezos said that Mayday will take less than 15 seconds to answer and will work over 3G/4G as well as WiFi. And, most importantly, it's free.
Here's something new: the Fire Phone will also ship with something called Firefly. It's a feature that uses the phone's camera to recognize books, DVDs, phone numbers, QR codes, CDs, URLs, games, bar codes and more. It also uses the phone's microphone to listen to songs too. If it detects an item, you can quickly tap a button to purchase it from Amazon. Firefly can also recognize art. It pulled up a Wikipedia entry for Cornflowers by Sergei Osipov, as well as Man with Red Hat by Vitrtore Carpaccio. Indeed, it recognizes over a hundred million items, including street signs. It's such a key service to the Fire Phone that there'll even be a dedicated Firefly button.
Saving the best for last, Bezos also announced that the Fire Phone will indeed have a 3D interface. But unlike other 3D phones, that 3D interface will follow you around thanks to Fire Phone's unique head-tracking system that he calls Dynamic Perspective. It uses four cameras to do so, each with a 120-degree field of view and infrared light. They use a global shutter instead of a rolling shutter.
In a demo on stage, he showed that it changes a picture's view as you move around. You can tilt the phone around and peek underneath blockages on maps, or go forward and backward in a slideshow. It also works in a web browser, a la Smart Scroll on Samsung phones. A small tilt will let it scroll slowly, a larger one will have it scroll faster. The same mechanic also applies to e-books. You can play games by tilting the phone around too.
The app grid also inherits much of the same navigation mechanic. You can either choose to have a carousel style grid similar to the Kindle tablets, or a more Android-like look. The carousel version is slightly enhanced from the tablet version -- you'll be able to see the first few emails without having to launch the mail app, and the latest pictures of the camera app. The Music app has a three-panel design that consists of navigation on the left, album art and controls in the middle plus lyrics on the right.
source: engadget.com BY NICOLE LEE
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