Amazon has officially announced the Fire Phone, their first smartphone from the e-commerce giant. The press event in Seattle was hosted by Jeff Bezos, who unveiled the Fire Phone, through a lot of stats our way about Amazon Prime and Kindle and even did demos of the 3D perspective.
The Fire Phone, which has been in development for a few years now, will be available on contract at AT&T for $199.99 with 32GB internal storage and $299.99 for the 64GB version. Amazon has bundled all of their usual Amazon apps into the phone, alongside new touches to X-Ray for the real world.
Internally, the Fire Phone appears to be a regular Android device, with a quad-core processor, 2GB of RAM and Adreno 330 GPU. The design of the device reminds us of the HTC Facebook phone, a black slab. The display will be 4.7-inch full HD and Amazon is pumping stereo speakers and tangle-less headphones into the mix.
The camera will be a 13MP shooter with f/2.0 lens and optical image stabilisation, Amazon showed off the Fire Phone camera against the iPhone 5S and Samsung Galaxy S5, showing how good night shots look. Amazon announced there will be unlimited cloud storage for photos, trumping Apple’s aggressive move with iCloud at WWDC.
Bezos got to the 3D perspective a little later in the show, but once it got started he unleashed all the effect can offer. The smartphone has four cameras on the front, and these will be used to track the facial movements. The camera can also spot any real face and Amazon has created facial recognition technology for the Fire Phone.
Firefly is another feature Amazon is excited about, allowing the phone to understand images in the outside world and give information about the image. Pieces of art, cars, music, video, places, etc will all be available on Firefly and Amazon has opened up the API for developers to try out.
MayDay will be available on the Fire Phone, alongside Prime Music, Prime Video, Immersion Reading, WhisperSync and X-Ray. No word on if these features will be available on the updated version of Fire OS for tablets. The Fire Phone also comes with 12 months free of Amazon Prime.
The Fire Phone is definitely impressive, no word on UK release just yet, keep updated on GadgetsBoy for the latest on the Fire Phone!
