Amazon's first smartphone has arrived. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has recently unveiled the company's new smartphone, the Fire Phone, at a press conference held in Seattle.
As part of the presentation, Jeff showed off features of Fire Phone which include the three dimensional display feature of the phone
(that allows one to view objects from different angles), a 4.7 inch IPC LCD Gorilla Glass display and an HD-resolution screen(720p). The handset has a quad-core 2.2GHz processor, with an Adreno 330 GPU ( graphics processor) and 2 GB of RAM. Amazon has also tried to impress photographers with a 13 megapixel camera system, and free unlimited cloud storage for all photos taken with the Fire Phone. The two key features that distinguish the phone from its market rivals are 1. Firefly, and 2. Dynamic Perspective.
The main focus of the presentation was Firefly, an Amazon app that is already available on the company's iOS app. Firefly makes use of the image and audio recognition feature, wherein if you point the phone to an object or target it to catch audio clips, and if the device recognizes it, you can buy it directly from the Amazon store ( that is, if it is available). In layman's terms, the fly identifies any object you aim your phone at, and allows you to buy it directly from Amazon. Firefly is designed to recognize more than 100 million items, including books, television shows etc and others. This seems to be the central feature governing the launch of the smartphone, as Amazon tries its luck in unfamiliar territories.
The Fire Phone also has four front-facing cameras, each with a 120 degree field of view and infrared light, which track the head movements, a unique system named as the Dynamic Perspective. In addition to this, scrolling can be effectively and smartly controlled by tilt and swivel movements.
The price, however is a huge disappointment. Fire Phone seems to be just another smartphone with an additional Amazon app that lets customers buy things directly from the store. Still, the price is comparable to those of Apple and Samsung, whose smartphones have so far dominated the market. The phone will be sold at $199.99, and exclusive to AT & T, on a two year contract. It is also available without the contract, priced at $649 for 32 GB and $749 for 64 GB.
Fire Phone has been dubbed as being merely a marketing gimmick to attract people towards the Amazon store, as the Firefly seems to be the only feature that distinguishes the phone from other smartphones.
In a desperate bid to attract developers, Amazon has released a 3rd party SDK for developers, which allows them to build their software into Firefly. Developers will be able to build plugins for the Firefly which get activated once the camera records and recognizes an object. Currently, only Java based applications are supported. For instance, consider the MyFitnessPal app. On pointing the device to food, the app will furnish details regarding the nutritional value of the food item and other such aspects. Other companies, like Vivino, iHeartRadio and StubHub are tapping into the technology to bend the Firefly in ways that best suit their requirements.
In addition to the Firefly SDK, Amazon has also launched another package in SDK for developers to take advantage of the Dynamic Perspective of the Fire Phone.
However, there may be considerable apprehension based on Amazon's SDK. Developers would have to give considerable thought before switching into the Amazon's SDK platform as their apps would be limited to only a single handset, the Fire Phone. Developers would be required to build Java applications exclusively for Amazon's phone, as other phones might not have the Firefly or Dynamic Perspective features which seems to be the only focus of the Amazon SDK. Applications that require incorporating these features would only result in narrowing down the target audience, as it is an AT & T exclusive. Only time will tell whether developers are willing to spend their time and switch to this platform instead of the conventional and more suitable android and iOS platforms.
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