Amazon kicked off today's press event by coming out of the gates strong. After a few minutes of some much deserved boasting, they announced the Amazon Fire Phone, just as predicted, yet the phone was far more than predicted. With a plethora of "actually useful" features, Amazon may have just hit a home-run with the new Fire Phone!
Here's where you can grab one for those interested: Amazon Fire Phone - 13MP Camera, 32GB - Shop Now
Don't forget to check out our forum section on the brand new Amazon Fire Phone: Amazon Fire Phone
Update: There is one feature (or really the lack thereof) which could turn a great many users off of the new Fire Phone: it doesn't have any Google apps on the device. This means no Gmail, no Google Play, no Google Maps, no Google Calendar, no Chrome, no Drive, and no YouTube. Obviously, it will probably be possible to side-load all of these, but it's obviously a major slap in the face to Google and very inconvenient for many users. Could this break the Fire Phone? What do you guys think?
Primary Specifications:
- 4.7-Inch IPS LCD Display
- Quad-Core 2.2GHz CPU with Adreno 330 Graphics
- 2GB Ram
- 13MP Rear Camera with OIS & f/2.0 lens - (impressive pics so far) - camera hardware key - free unlimited photo storage in Amazon Cloud
- Dual stereo speakers are in there, with Dolby Digital Plus surround sound.
- Flat cables on the earbuds - magnetic earbuds that clasp them together - included with phone
- 12 months of Prime are included free with the phone!
- More than 200,000 videos, including exclusives - all accessible through Instant Video - pre-buffered so the streaming starts right away - "We're bringing second screen and X-Ray to the Fire Phone." You can fling your video to any Miracast device (such as the Fire TV)
- Prime Music - includes a million songs right now
- The Kindle Store is included - as is Audible with Kindle Newsstand and Comixology
- Immersion Reading and Whispersync for Voice are also featured
- Mayday - free customer support - 24/7, and takes 15 seconds or less
- FireFly - uses the camera to recognize books, DVDs, phone numbers, QR codes, CDs, URLs, games, bar codes, etc, and then finds them in its database - listens as well (basically works like Shazam) - dedicated Firefly button - can pull up in one second
- FireFly description part 2 - can also recognize TV shows - Once recognized, you can view details and purchase the title, etc. - can also recognize art - brought up a Wikipedia entry for Cornflowers by Sergei Osipov, as well as Man with Red Hat by Vittore Carpaccio. - can recognize over a hundred million items
- Firefly description part 3 - "Semantic boosting helps improve the probability that the character recognition gets the phone number right. He's showing an instance of the number 708, which features glare that makes it look like a 703. But since the computer can recognize that "703" isn't a valid exchange for that area code (206), it knew that it had to be 708. Also, it can compress the size of the picture by sending only the parts of the picture that matters (making it black and white, for instance, and only targeting the area of the image that contains the phone number)." ~ Engadget
- Firefly description part 4 - an SDK, so third-party devs can use the same text, audio and image recognizers - firefly SDK is available immediately - works with Myfitnesspal
- Dynamic Perspective - dynamically adjusting 3D - (uses 6 cameras with 120-degree FOV & infrared lights to supplement in low-light conditions - use a global shutter instead of rolling shutter) example: aerial view of the Empire State building - looks like it's sticking out of phone and it changes perspective as you move it around - will even work with maps and allows you to peek at different layers - actually functional and works almost as a 3D UI overlay - also useable in browser - tilt phone to scroll, etc. - small tilts scroll slow, bigger tilts scroll faster - Dynamic Perspective tech works in games too!
- Android-like app grid - pin apps and content to the app grid
- Carousel has been enhanced from the tablet version - "you don't have to launch the email app to see messages, because you can see the first few emails on the bottom of the screen. With calendar, you can see your next appointments; with camera, you can see the latest pictures you've taken or saved. Third-party stuff works as well." ~ Engadget
- Music has a Three Panel design - left panel is for navigation (playlists, artists, etc.), while the central part lets you see album art. You can pause or go forward or backward with the lyrics showing up on the right panel.
- Can text quick messages straight from the calendar
- Volume button can pull down the ringer volume - option to keep ringer silent for three hours -it later goes back on automatically
- While messaging, you can pull up pictures by swiping from the right
- In the lock screen - swipe from the right brings up a photo album of your choice
