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Usually, when a new smart phone is being announced by one the big players, the press event is live streamed so that everyone can join in on the excitement. Sometimes it goes wrong (Remember the cringeworthy Samsung S4 event?) but generally its a good way to get a new product in the public eye. Amazon chose a more old fashioned method with the announcement of their Fire smart phone, preferring to hold a tightly controlled launch event that eschewed live streaming, making it difficult for both reporters and potential consumers to access the relevant information about the Fire phone.
If you were disappointed that the event wasn’t live streamed, you’re in luck as the entire event has been uploaded onto YouTube for your viewing pleasure(see below). The video runs for around 90 minutes, and you will see the Amazon head honcho, Jeff Bezos talking on stage. The presentation consists of a brief history of how Amazon has earned the trust of the consumer, and that with tens of millions of Kindle and Kindle Fire owners, the move to develop an Amazon smart phone was the next logical step. He went on to emphasize Amazon’s array of content, as well as its ecosystem before showing off the Fire phone.
The Fire smart phone has some interesting features, including Dynamic Perspective that utilises the four front facing cameras and other sensors to detect where your face is, and to check the angle that the device is being held at in order to navigate apps. Dynamic Perspective enables the user to ’tilt, auto-scroll, swivel and peek’ while holding the handset in one hand.
FireFly is another nifty feature which can identify anything from emails addresses,URLs, phone numbers to bar and QR codes, films or music; enabling the user to find the relevant information to whatever has been scanned. Naturally this includes items from Amazon’s mammoth catalogue of items, as well as the connecting with IMDB, iHeartRadio as well as StubHub, with more apps set to be linked to FireFly via the FireFly SDK that has been announced.
The Fire phone has a 4.7 inch display with 1280 x 720 resolution, and is powered by the venerable Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 Quad-Core processor, the 330 Adreno GPU and has 2GB of Ram. 32GB and 64GB versions are up for pre-order, with the choice of purchasing the handset outright ($649) or with a service plan($199) via Amazon’s exclusive partner, AT&T. Amazon have also thrown in a years worth of Amazon Prime. The shipping date of the Fire Phone is set for July 25th.