After a
lot of leaks and speculations Amazon's CEO Jeff Bezos finally launched the
Amazon's first smartphone Amazon Fire Phone on Wednesday. As was seen by all the
leaks this phone has faced its really the same. Like all the flagship
smartphones by other companies this also has a 4.7-inch HD display. It’s
powered by a 2.2 GHz quad-core processor and 2GB of RAM for fast, fluid
performance, dual stereo speakers, and Dolby Digital audio.
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| Pull-down Menu |
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| A Look at the OS |
Naturally, it’s
running the highly forked version of Android i.e., Fire OS that has already
been used in the company’s Kindle series of E-Book Readers and Tablets.
That's
pretty standard for a flagship phone but the 2 things that make it different
are Firefly and Dynamic Perspective that allows you to see
and interact with your world through a whole new lens.
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| Dynamic Perspective |
Dynamic
Perspective basically means that some apps will have a 3D depth meaning that
you can see around edges when you tilt your phone like it happens with
real-life objects. You’re looking around objects, but there's no attempt to
make stuff pop off the screen. It's refined, but we'll have to really use the
phone for a long time to know if it's something we'd actually want to use.
Firefly is
a new technology that quickly recognizes printed web and email addresses, phone
numbers, QR and bar codes, artwork, movies, music, and millions of products,
making it easy to discover information, share items with friends, and more. It
works in seconds—simply press and hold the Firefly button.
Tilting on
the phone goes to a whole new level. Just by moving the phone, you can
pull up menus in Fire OS or scroll through text in an app. Auto-scrolling is
also achieved because of this tilting. You can read a whole book without having
to touch the screen.
There is also Mayday integration that connects you to an Amazon expert via a live video. The will co-pilot you through any feature by drawing on the screen. Also Amazon say that you will be able to see the expert but they won't see you.
X-Ray also works the same way as on all the Kindle Fire tablets.Watching a movie, reading a book, wants to know about any character just point the rear camera while in X-Ray and get all the details instantly.
The Fire
Phone is available to pre-order today but won't start shipping until July 25th.
It costs $199 on a two-year contract, and is an exclusive to AT&T for now.
Also, Amazon is providing a full-year subscription of Prime free. If you are
already an Amazon Prime subscriber it will add 12 months to your account.
"It could be as early as Diwali," said one of the sources. Amazon said in a statement that it does "not comment on what we may or may not do in the future”. 
