Amazon Announces 'Fire Phone' With 3D 'Dynamic Perspective' Interface, 'Firefly' Object Recognition Engine

When Apple announces the first iPad mini and put the price up on the screen the stock took a nose dive. Same thing with the iPhone 5c. Amazon stock is up 3% today even though the phone isn't that cheap, no revolutionary/unique data pricing and locked to AT&T. I don't get it. Plus it seems there are very few features that are hardware specific. Even aspects of the Firefly feature already exist on the Amazon iOS app. What is the point of Amazon doing its own hardware when it's goal of getting more people to buy stuff from amazon.com can be accomplished via software?

This a problem for Samsung, not Apple.

Great news for consumer!!!! Competition is the best thing for us! Apple better steps up this Fall.

Copying Apple

They totally stole the unnecessarily large bezel from the iPhone 6

Not going to buy it but more competition for apple = more innovation and better phones for everyone! Some cool looking features on there will be interesting to see how they work in the real world.

All of the selling points, aside from low light performance on the camera, are features that do not intrigue me at all. And I don’t think it looks very good either. Besides that, I don’t really want my entire UI dictated by “how quickly can we sell this dude some stuff from the website?” so…

No thanks. But best of luck to you!

Looks like a decent phone but $649 off contract is crazy expensive, seems like my Nexus 5 has a lot of advantages for about half the price.

And ATT only is a major deal breaker.

It's honestly a little disappointing that the competition continues to be this underwhelming.

Looks like a solid entry by Amazon to me, this is great from a competition perspective. Definitely not an iPhone killer by any stretch of the imagination, but a reminder to Apple for the need to continue to innovate and not rest on their laurels if nothing else.

Useless fluff.

More competition in the space good for Apple. Need to continue to innovate will drive IOS to newer and greater heights with greater market share.


"What does not kill me, makes me stronger."
-Friedrich Nietzsche

is it running the custom android rom they have on their kindle fires? i HATE it, i rooted my mums kindle fire hd but i still cant add wallpapers which makes the device look kinda depressing with all the black elements going on

It's the Nintendo of phones

Center a product around a single gimmick, see how long that lasts.

Yes the "3Dish" stuff is cool but every phone is going to do this in about 3 months and there is nothing behind this phone to make it competitive 6 months from now.

So, will the people who use the flagship "virtual recognition program" be known as Browncoats?

SMIDG3T said:

This is great APPLE news!

I'll be the first to say it: I don't care.

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Personally, I'm glad to see some innovative progress from someone other than Apple. This is competition. Everyone wins here.

iPhone 6S will have the same "dynamic perspective" feature next year, but unlike this phone it won't be a gimmick!

gaximus said:

What about battery life ?

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fhall1 said:

exactly......haven't seen any specs yet, but all those cameras and video processing have to eat battery

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Ahem...

kbmb said:

Nobody wants the entry level iPhone to only have 16GB anymore!

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It doesn't! The entry-level iPhone actually has 8GB now.

Dynamic perspective as a selling feature? Lot's of people turn on Accessibility:Reduce Motion in iOS 7 to disable of this type of effect... so they don't get seasick.

Apple has always been the essence of a company that does few things and does them really well. Amazon making phones and tablets? - it doesn't make any sense. They're an online shop for everything, and the only hardware that ever made sense for them to make was the kindle due to their great ebook catalog. I don't know what they're doing in this market now, and quite frankly they should just be focusing on what amazon is truly about: ecommerce, not this crap.

kbmb said:

Nobody wants the entry level iPhone to only have 16GB anymore!

32GB minimum unless it's a low end phone.

-Kevin

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WHY?
Have you heard about "cloud" computing???? Why would I need a 64 GB phone when I can have a 100GB cloud service? Every user is different, and I listen to raw audio, so I HAVE to go to the cloud in order to get what I want. If your an MP3 fan, 16 GB's can supply MORE than you can listen to on a commute.

The Dynamic Perspective looked amazing to me, I don't understand all the negative comments on here. I think Apple may well be worried by this.

recognition

ghost187 said:

iPhone 6S will have the same "dynamic perspective" feature next year, but unlike this phone it won't be a gimmick!

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I'm a computer scientist who has spent a bit of time in the same visual recognition space as this. The work behind the face cameras is difficult, not easily reproducible. But the work behind firefly is just plain amazing. It works more usefully for amazon than apple (since apple only sells apple products, accesories, videos, music, and books, while amazon sells EVERYTHING)

Dynamic perspective (using one cam and/or gyros) already worked pretty well in various gimmicky iPhone apps going back years, not to mention iOS 7's depth layers. Added cameras might turn "pretty well" into "really well"... but what does it solve for you? And the image is still 2D, even if marketing videos and stills conceal the difference that would be blatant in person.

No harm done: if it's a gimmick that has no downside other than wasted space, it can be ignored if it doesn't take off. Kudos for trying something anyway.

I'd say the same if it were Apple: a gimmick, but harmless. Apple has some of those as well. (Photo Booth effects, anyone?)

As for Firefly, the uses are obvious: funnel shoppers toward Amazon! And I do like shopping on Amazon...

Well.....

Offer this with Tracfone's pay as you go service, and I'd think about it.

Trent