The first smartphone designed by the e-commerce giant Amazon goes on sale today, adding a new ecosystem to the bulging mobile market.
Shipping with a feature called Dynamic Perspective, the Fire phone tried to emulate a 3D screen which it says will provide a ‘totally immersive’ smartphone experience.
The Dynamic Perspective features used four cameras and four LEDs built into the front of the phone allowing the user to use hand gestures to scroll, tilt, swivel , and peek for menu navigation and actions such as reading web pages. Amazon claims that the user may not even have to use their fingers to scroll down a page, but simply use their eyes to move the page.
When it comes to gaming, the Dynamic Perspective also hints at what could be the future of mobile playtime, moving your head to look around corners from characters’ viewpoints.
Another feature of the Fire phone is called Firefly. This is where Amazon’s roots truly show in the phone. Firefly provides an all around shopping experience, and it recognizes objects in the real world, plus email addresses, phone numbers, QR and bar codes, along with music, movies and TV shows. Once something is recognised, you can be taken straight through to…you know where…the Amazon webstore to purchase said product.
Jeff Bezos, Amazon CEO, said: "Fire Phone puts everything you love about Amazon in the palm of your hand — instant access to Amazon’s vast content ecosystem and exclusive features like the Mayday button, ASAP, Second Screen, X-Ray, free unlimited photo storage.
"The Firefly button lets you identify printed web and email addresses, phone numbers, QR and bar codes, artwork, and over 100 million items, including songs, movies, TV shows, and products — and take action in seconds. We invented a new sensor system called Dynamic Perspective that recognizes where a user’s head is relative to the device — we use it to offer customers a more immersive experience, one-handed navigation, and gestures that actually work. And this is only the beginning — the most powerful inventions are the ones that empower others to unleash their creativity — that’s why today we are launching the Dynamic Perspective SDK and the Firefly SDK — we can’t wait to see how developers surprise us."
Specs include a quad-core Snapdragon 2.2 GHz processor and 2GB RAM. It’s got a 4.7-inch HD display with an ambient light sensor. Memory options include 16GB or 32GB, and the front facing camera is 13MP.
There is still no UK release date confirmed, but customers should be able to get their hands on Amazon’s new Fire smartphone within the next few months, despite the device initially being launched as a US exclusive.
Amazon is reportedly in talks with both O2 and Vodafone concerning bringing the device to the UK, several sources familiar with the company told the Financial Times.
