Amazon Announces the Fire Phone

Amazon’s impending smartphone has been the talk of the town for quite some time, but it’s finally here. Earlier today Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos announced the Fire Phone, conjuring up great gusto while describing its features which, in fairness, do sound pretty impressive.

The Fire Phone sports a 4.7-inch display, aluminum buttons, a Qualcomm processor, Adreno 330 graphics, and 2GB of RAM. It also features stereo speakers, which Bezos claim sound better than your average smartphone speakers, and a pair of headphones that supposedly won’t tangle. I didn’t know Bezos was a wizard.

The camera seems to be a selling point at 13-megapixels with an f/2.0 lens, optical image stabilization, and a quick-access shutter button located on the side of the phone. A big difference maker is Amazon’s cloud storage capabilities and they’re using the cloud to offer unlimited storage for your pictures. Oh, and multiple front-facing cameras allow you to take 3D pictures.

The third-dimension factors into the Fire Phone quite heavily, actually. 3D wallpapers and lockscreens change depending on the angle you view them from, an effect we’ve seen managed on those nifty foil stickers and cards. The Maps app also employs 3D to give you a fuller view of the building you’re looking at when you tilt your phone. Tilting also allows you to navigate the device’s menu.

Where Amazon’s Fire Phone stands out is its integration with existing Amazon services. X-Ray allows you to view information about whatever you’re watching, there’s an app that lets you send video to your TV, and a feature called ASAP lets you cache videos so when you want to watch them later they’ll begin streaming immediately.

Then there’s Prime Music, Prime Video, Immersion Reading, and WhisperSync, which allows you to listen to a book rather than read it. MayDay is a 24-hour customer service feature that offers round-the-clock assistance in navigating your Fire Phone. Lastly there’s Firefly, which enables the Fire Phone to recognize almost anything you point it at and then takes you to Amazon to buy that thing.

Amazon’s Fire Phone is nothing if not intriguing. Some of the features sound like they have potential, but we’ll have to wait until people get their hands on the phone to really hear some honest feedback.

You can pre-order the Amazon Fire Phone now and it should launch on July 25th exclusively with AT&T. Pricing ranges from $199 to $649, depending on your service agreement, for the 32GB model. The 64GB model will be $100 more.

via The Verge