29 Apr The First Ever Amazon Smartphone Will Have A 3D Screen
Amazon is preparing to enter the smartphone market this year with a device that has a few interesting tricks up its sleeve.
Amazon has already enjoyed huge success with their Kindle Fire tablets. In fact, Kindles make up approximately half of the Android tablet market – an impressive feat to say the least.So it seems only natural for the online shopping giant to move on to creating phones in an effort to compete more directly with its rivals, Google and Apple.
Until recently, the buzz surrounding the Amazon phone seemed to be unsubstantiated gossip – however, recent ‘leaked’ photos surfaced on BGR depicting a prototype for what could be the first ever Amazon branded smartphone.
The device, which has been in development for years, looks much like a traditional smartphone but with a few obvious customisations. Based on what we can see from the photos, the Amazon phone has five front facing cameras and one rear camera – that’s six cameras on one phone.
According to BGR, the phone has the extra four cameras on the front in order to facilitate the key selling point of the phone – its glasses free 3D interface.
The extra cameras, one situated in each corner of the screen, will work with other sensors to track the user’s face with respect to the phone’s display. This will allow for the software to consistently and fluidly adjust the imagery on the screen so that the eye registers different perspectives and the images appear to have depth.
So what exactly will be 3D? Well according to BGR, this 3D technology will be integrated in several areas. Expect to see 3D lock screens, wallpapers, app icons and 3D compatibility with several apps – particularly shopping apps which could allow you to view 3D product images.
Source: bgr.com
The other novelty of the Amazon phone is the expected heavy integration with Amazon products and services. According to Tech Radar, “like the Kindle Fire, an Amazon smartphone would be a veritable home-shopping network.”
In terms of the specs and dimensions of the phone, nothing seems to be too adventurous (ignoring the extra four cameras). There’s a rear camera of reportedly 13 megapixels and a standard front facing camera for pictures, video chats and Amazon’s Mayday customer service features.
According to various sources, the display will measure at 4.7 inches will a 720p resolution that doesn’t quite qualify as full High Definition. It will also reportedly have a Qualcomm Snapdragon processor of unspecified power, 2 GB of RAM and will run a heavily modified version of the Android operating system.
An article on Tech Radar suggests that the Amazon phone will be a budget device but also that this “doesn’t mean it will be a hunk of junk though, Amazon’s Kindles are all bottom dollar devices with great builds and peppy internals.”
Although it is still unclear as to what Amazon plans to call its first phone, we can expect to see it this year. According to The Wall Street Journal, Amazon will be officially announcing their phone to the public in June and plan to release it for consumer purchase in the third quarter of 2014.