Amazon Fire 3D Phone Launched at Seattle Event

Today Amazon unveiled its brand new smartphone called the Fire Phone. This brand new smartphone has some amazing new features, and has solid, high end, specs. While some people might not love the fact that this phone is rubber, others may realize how much more durable this will make the phone. A drop will not be a disaster. This new Amazon Fire 3D phone is available for pre-order today and will ship on July 25.

The CEO of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, confidently invited customers, journalists and developers to complete a form on their registration website for an opportunity to be selected as a guest at the launch. Overall, there were thousands who applied for this exciting announcement, only a few hundred actually scored invites.

This is a phone that will be especially useful for Amazon Prime customers and features the revolutionary Fire OS 3.5 operating system which is based on Google Android. Additionally, the phone offers unlimited photo storage in the cloud, which is an amazing feature that smartphone lovers are sure to love. The phone will include the Mayday button that is like the Kindle Fire HDX tablet.

Also, they have included a feature called Firefly, which encompases so many things. One of them is the ability to scan an item anywhere and purchase it on Amazon. Firefly also listens to music and identifies it, and it can listen to audio from a TV show and identify it. This feature, which has a dedicated physical button on the phone, has been described as Shazam for everything.

A teaser video was released by Amazon showing a few beta testers enthusiastically reacting to a device that is off-screen.  The users on screen are swaying from side to side, confirming a rumor that the new Amazon smartphone will feature eye-tracking technology that creates advanced 3D images from front mounted cameras without the need for glasses.  The device is unique in its ability to allow users to view images in 3D, from street maps to wallpapers,  and change each application  according to their point of perspective.

The secret to how the device is able to scan faces to handle IU elements lies in the face sensing technology of Omron’s Okao Vision, which tracks the movement of  the user’s head.  Amazon managed to modify the Japanese technology to allow unique stereoscopic effects to be delivered by its device, from a standard LCD screen.  The face detecting software  uses the front mounted cameras to derive its coordinates and an accelerometer and gyro sensor enables faster response, increased accuracy and improved power efficiency.

An Okao software package from Omron is able to recognize facial attributes that estimates an individual’s age, gender and ethnicity, but it is not clear whether Amazon will be employing any of these features in their upcoming phone, focusing only on the head tracking feature.

By tilting the head or the phone from side to side, the sensors allow hidden side panels to be accessed and browsed.  These tilt gestures will enable a user to navigate between menus and apps by moving the device or the head in different directions.  This is demonstrated by the video which was released together with invitations to the launch event.  It should be fun watching people in public moving their heads from side to side and tilting their phones.

The Smartphone is reported to feature a 720p, 4.7-inch screen and powered by 2GB of RAM from a Qualcomm Snapdragon processor.  In addition to the four front mounted cameras dedicated to head tracking, the device will have two more front and rear facing 13MP cameras.

The 3D effect of the new Amazon Smartphone is currently unique in the industry.  There are no limiting factors such as on Nintendo 3Ds, and there is no need for 3D glasses.  The phone will run Amazon’s Android fork, FireOS, as well as a range of built in apps that make use of these 3D parallax effects.  According to reports, Amazon had been courting third party developers for some time in the  hope that they will latch onto the system after the launch by developing apps to take advantage of the head tracking software.  It is said that out of the box the 3D feature will be extremely limited although at launch they may reveal a few built gestures to utilize the system.

Amazon Fire Phone Specs and Pricing

• 4.7 inch screen.
• 2GB RAM.
• 13 megapixel rear facing camera.
• 2.2 GHz processor.
• Gorilla Glass 3 screen.
• Ultra bright display.

The Amazon Fire phone is $199 for a 32 GB black version. For a 64 GB Fire Phone in black, the cost is $299. AT&T is the current exclusive service provider. Hopefully more options will be available sometime in the future.