Update: After a few days of allowing this announcement to marinate, turns out — it’s not the best deal for consumers. Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, a brilliant businessman, has decided to offer his new device on AT&T exclusively. The phone will sell for $199 with a two-year contract, and it ships on July 25.
AT&T has a US mobile phone market share of nearly 35%, similar to Verizon, It’s closest competitor. It’s perplexing why Bezos would initially limit the Fire phones offering to one carrier. However, if its successful, more carriers could follow. Given the Fire phones feature set, 32-gigs (16-gig is not an option) 4.7 inch screen, shatter-prone ‘Gorilla glass 3’ back panel, and the fact it’s not compatible with the Google play store, results in a device I could not recommend.
If you’re in the market for a new high-end phone within the next 6 months, wait. HTC, Google’s Nexus series, and Apple’s iPhone will have new models debut before the end of the year. Minus the marketing gimmicks of the 3-D interface or what Amazon calls dynamic-perspective, the other manufacturers can provide a much more useful end-user experience.
Stop. Hold up. Wait a minute. Did Amazon just change the way we see phones? Short answer, sort-of.
On Wednesday, Amazon held a presentation introducing a new device called the Fire phone.
Amazon has grown over 20% since the first of the year with revenue close to $20B. With thousands of merchants selling millions of products, the e-commerce site has become a behemoth. It’s estimated that Amazon sells 306 items per second. Believe it or not you can even buy fresh foods, through a service called Amazon Fresh.
Over the last 10 years Amazon has been developing devices in a secretive design studio called Lab 126. Their secret lair has designed everything since the Kindle e-book reader including the new Fire phone. The Fire phone has impressive specs; a quad core 2.2 GHz processor, 2 GB of RAM, 13 MP camera and a 4.7 inch screen. And the screen will change the way we see everything.
Amazon has developed a technology called Dynamic Perspective, in which the Fire phone uses four ‘stereo vision’ cameras, that also include infrared LEDs. These cameras allow the phone to track your face in real time, while continuously shifting the perspective of the image showing a 3-D effect. This 3-D effect is opposite from what you might see in a movie theater, where the 3-D effect is projected towards you. This 3-D effect projects the image inward, providing a image with depth perspective. And here’s the best thing, no 3-D glasses are necessary. Another key feature is called Firefly. According to Amazon, this feature allows users to scan upwards of 100 million objects using the rear camera. Firefly searches and identifies the object then shows more details about the object and a buy now button. Amazon hopes this will make buying much easier, see a pair of shoes in a magazine, scan it with Firefly and buy them from Amazon.
Amazon doesn’t seem to care about the communication abilities of their new phone, calling, texting and emails, are all afterthoughts. Amazon wants us to buy more stuff, the best way to do this is to have a conduit device that makes it seamless to buy anything you scan at a reduced price. The Fire phone is just the beginning, Amazon wants to be your appliance store, clothing store and grocery store. In essence, it wants to be the one stop shop where you can buy anything from pants to peaches to ponies. Ok, maybe not the ponies, not yet.
