We've been hearing the rumors for weeks (months? Years?), and the day has finally come. Amazon's phone is here, and it's called the Fire Phone.
It has a 4.7-inch, display with 590 nits of brightness for awesome outdoor viewing. It also has circular polarization, so it will look good even if you're wearing polarized sunglasses.
Dynamic Perspective (3D Display)
As rumored, the phone will have a unique 3D interface. It can shift the displayed perspective to make it appear as if you're looking through a window into another world. Will this work well? Will it explode if you and a friend are looking at it at the same time? Maybe! We don't know yet.
Dynamic Perspective was demoed on the phone's lock screen and it looked cool, but it seems much better in the maps app. Not only did it make the Empire State Building look neat, but when you're looking at layers on a map (say, nearby restaurants) you can tilt to remove the layers, and tilt the other way to display them again.
It also looks pretty awesome for games. Demoed in a game called Tofu Fury, you can look around by moving the phone see you can really see where you are and where you need to go. You can read more about Dynamic Perspective here.
(photo by AP)
UI
There's a layer of gesture control here. Autoscroll seems to the be the big one, which is basically where you tilt the phone to scroll down, or to zoom in (on certain page pages, like Amazon). This is something Samsung tried with the Galaxy S4 a year or so ago, and it was a gigantic flop (the gestures, not the phone), so we're going to need some convincing on this front. That said, it looked a lot better here. You can lock in the scroll speed.
In addition to the tablet-style carousel, you can have an Android-like app grid. You can pin not only apps, but also content to the app grid. You then have a shortcut to see little previews of data within apps. For example you can see your first few emails (and even delete or manage them in some ways right from there). Or you can use it to see your nearest appointments.
Hardware
So, how does Amazon's Dynamic Perspective work? Basically, there's a matrix of front-facing cameras. Not just two, so they can see the X and Y axis for your face, but four front-facing camera, one on each corner of your phone. This gives them accurate Z axis (depth), which gives you the full perspective feel.
Not only that, because people use their phone in all kids of lighting conditions (including no light at all), they added an infrared light—one for each camera. The lights are invisible to our naked eyes, but they work great for camera. This should mean your face is always in focus, and its positioning should always be accurate.
Under the hood there's a quad-core 2.2GHz processor, which is probably Qualcomm's beefy Snapdragon 800. It's not quite as robust as the new 801 we're seeing in phone like the Galaxy S5 and the HTC One (M8), but it's where the Nexus 5 gets its super speed, so hopefully that'll come through here as well. It has 2GB of RAM, which is competitive to other high-end smartphones. It boasts Gorilla Glass 3 and rubberized edges for extra grippiness. It will have 32 GB of built in storage.
It rocks a 13MP f/2.0 rear camera with image stabilization and a hardware camera button. There's also unlimited cloud storage for all of your pictures. Above you can see Amazon's camera comparison, but take it with a grain of salt because every company makes a comparison where theirs looks the best. The headphones have flat cables, and there are magnets on the back of them. They stick together to help keep them from tangling in your pocket. Good idea.
It uses Qualcomm's RF360 front-end solution, which basically means it's a world phone, and will support worldwide 4G LTE data. It has nine bands of LTE, four bands of GSM, five bands of UMTS so you should be set pretty much wherever you go. It also has 802.11ac Wi-Fi support which is good and fast, plus NFC, and Bluetooth.
Mayday
It will also work with a lot of our favorite Kindle features like Immersive Reading, and X-Ray for second-screen goodness while you're watching video. Like the Kindle Fire HDX and the HDX 8.9, the phone will support Mayday video. Basically you just push a button and you're connected to a customer support specialist via video call. Amazon recently claimed that the average time to connect is just under 10 seconds, which is pretty damn impressive. It means your grandpa will be able to ask someone (other than you) what an app is that much faster.
There will also be a "transparent handoff" between Mayday and AT&T's customer service.
Firefly
There's also something called Firefly, which is basically an app version of Amazon's Dash (or Flow app on iOS). Essentially it lets you use your phone to scan everyday items. Run around your house and scan stuff as it runs out (or stores if you see a product you want to price compare), it will add them to a list. It can also listen to music that's playing, identify it, and link to it in the Amazon store. ItIt can recognize TV shows and works of art, too. Basically it makes it easier for you to buy stuff from Amazon, and it was pretty damn fast in the onstage demo.
Firefly is so important to Amazon that it has its own dedicated hardware button on the Fire Phone. Has some really impressive optical character recognition algorithms, so it's not limited to flat sheets of paper. It has its own SDK, so apps like MyFitnessPal and can leverage it to make their apps better. Pretty dang slick. You can read more about Firefly here.
Other Goodies
There are some neat small touches, too. For example, rather than simply put your phone on silent, you can put a timer on it (if say, you're going to a movie). When it expires, it'll go back to normal.
They've also made it easier to add photos to the messaging app (Jeff Bezos claims you can do it with fewer clicks than on any other phone OS, but it didn't look like it'd have you thaaat much time. The lock screens are cool 3D environments, but they know people want to customize their home screens with photos, so they make your favorite photo album one flick away. May please some, may not please others.
There's also ASAP (Advanced Streaming and Prediction) which predicts which movies and TV episodes you'll want to watch and prepares them for instant playback before you even hit play.
Availability
The Fire Phone will be available exclusively from AT&T for $200 on contract, or $650 off-contract for the 32GB version. The good news is that it comes with a year of Amazon Prime for free. So basically it's $100 bucks (or $550 bucks), if Prime is something you were wanting anyway. That goes for people who already have Prime, too, by the way. There will also be a 64GB version for $300 on contract. Pre-orders start today at att.com and it ships starting June 25th.
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(top image by AP)
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