Amazon’s 3D Phone FIRE released

On 18^th June amid high expectations CEO Jeff Bezos released Amazon’s first venture into smartphone market, ‘FIRE PHONE’. Rumors of Amazon working on smartphone have been doing rounds in tech circles for a fairly long time. Amazon worked for four years to bring this phone to market and they have put some neat tricks in Fire phone. Here we will be seeing how this phone stands against the current league of Androids, iPhones and Windows Phones.

Specifications

Fire phone from Amazon looks fairly similar to other Android smartphones. It is having a 4.7-inch screen 1280X720 resolution, HD screen with “ultra bright” display, 2.2GHz quad-core Snapdragon 800 processor, Adreno 330 GPU and 2GB RAM. Specification wise Fire phone is having same internals as some of its well known Android siblings, but to differentiate it’s phone from other manufactures Amazon has included some special features. The phone will be coming in two variants 32GB and 64GB which is really a plus point.

Amazon has put a lot emphasis on its 3D technology of Dynamic Perspective and Firefly. As with Kindle e-book reader Fire phone also runs on Amazon’s own customized version of Android, Fire OS 3.5.0. There is a 13 MP snapper at the back of the phone with OIS and f/2.0 aperture lens. Amazon is offering unlimited photo storage on Amazon Cloud Drive which is a real sweet deal for photography enthusiasts.

Fire phone is also having a front facing camera, nothing special here it is a regular 2.1 MP. Both the cameras of phone are capable of 1080p video recordings. Connectivity wise this phone covers all the bases, it supports Wi-fi, Bluetooth, NFC LTE, GSM & UTMS bands. Fire phone also has four front facing cameras along with four infrared LEDs located at each corner; these are used for the Dynamic Perspective feature which we will be covering in a short while.

A 2400mAh battery is snapped under the hood which Amazon claims to have 285 hrs of standby time, up to 22 hrs of talk time, with the phone heavily dependent on its 3D feature we are not sure how well this battery will be able to handle all those heavy 3D transitions.

 Dynamic Perspective

Amazon’s phone was mostly hyped to be able to show 3D without using those clumsy 3D glasses. As rumored Amazon has delivered on that feature by using “custom designed sensor system”. Dynamic Perspective is what Amazon is calling its new feature, the feature responds on the base of how the phone is being handled by the user, for ex. how user hold, views or moves with respect to the device.

Dynamic Perspective will offer immersive experience for games and apps. Amazon is expected to release API for this. Amazon has added some nice functions . A simple tilt of the phone brings out navigation menus, swivel action will bring up the notifications, peek keeps your display uncluttered by revealing additional details.There is also an auto-scroll mode which makes reading easy. Amazon is going to give rest to your fingers.

Firefly

Amazon has added a Firefly button in Fire phone, this button is on left hand side. Whenever the button is pressed user can identify songs playing on radio, TV show or it can even millions of products being sold by Amazon, varying from video games, DVDs, clothes, mobiles. After reading this most will think Amazon has put a shortcut to drag users into its online shopping service, but there is more to this feature than meets the eye. This feature can also be used to scan email addresses, phone numbers, QR & bar code. Amazon is flaunting Firefly’s ability to recognize TV shows, live television channels, 35 million songs from Amazon music.

Mayday

Another fine feature added by Amazon is its very own Mayday, which was introduced to the world with Kindle Fire. For those who don’t know Mayday is Amazon’s very own on device customer service. With Mayday Amazon promises free, live technical support for the device, no appointment is required and service is available round the clock seven days a week all round the year.

Camera

CEO Jeff Bezos went a great length showing of his new phone’s camera capabilities. The camera pictures were compared with Samsung Galaxy S5 and iPhone 5S, both these phones are more than capable of taking nice pictures but when comparing with Fire phone, pictures were shown to be blurry(SG5’s) and noisy(5S’s). Fire phone exceeds both these competitors with the help of OIS, Optical Image Stabilization.

OIS was made popular by Nokia in mobile cameras with the launch of its Windows Phone running Lumia 920, more of which will be covered some other time. Fire phone 13MP camera is capable of taking stunning 1080p videos.

There is dedicated camera button in Fire Phone, which doubles up as Firefly feature. Amazon is giving unlimited cloud storage for full-resolution photos taken with Fire phone, which must sweeten the deal for photography enthusiasts.

Application Store

It was always a no brainer that since Fire phone works on Amazon’s own version of Android, it doesn’t have Google Play store, but don’t worry there is Amazon’s own App Store. Fire phone will be having Amazon’s own in built apps like messaging, maps and many more. Various social networking apps like Facebook, Twitter, Skype etc. are present on Fire phone. Since there is no Google Play Store it will be interesting to see how Fire phone will fare in this “App crazy” world.

Amazon has put a nice device upfront, with some good hardware choices and some special software tricks. It remains to be seen how it will fare against a range of current flagship phones.