Amazon Announces 'Fire Phone' With 3D 'Dynamic Perspective' Interface, 'Firefly' Object Recognition Engine

Amazon today unveiled its much-anticipated new smartphone, the Fire Phone, which Amazon calls "refined, beautiful, and robust." The phone has a 4.7-inch LCD HD display along with Gorilla Glass 3 on both sides and "precise" aluminum buttons.

It includes a quad-core 2.2GHz processor, an Adreno 330 Graphics Processor, 2GB of RAM, and dual stereo speakers. There's a 13-megapixel rear-facing camera with an f/2.0 five element lens and built-in optical image stabilization.

firephone
Aiming at Apple, Amazon touted the low-light capabilities of the camera included in the phone and announced free unlimited photo storage through its Amazon Cloud Drive service. Apple recently announced its own iCloud Photo Library, but it offers a limited amount of storage for free.

Along with standard cameras, Amazon's Fire Phone utilizes four additional cameras for a 3D interface, called "Dynamic Perspective." 3D images on the phone change as it is tilted and viewed from different angles, thanks to advanced eye and face tracking capabilities. Demonstrated with a mapping app, the 3D UI displayed a 3D version of the Empire State Building that could be viewed from all angles, with a tilt of the phone expanding the view.

Amazon's Fire Phone accomplishes the facial tracking with its four corner cameras and knows where a user's head is at all times to aid Dynamic Perspective, using infrared for tracking in the dark and advanced algorithms for head continuous tracking.

dynamicperspective
Accelerometers enable navigation through tilt gestures, demonstrated within a maps app that brought up Yelp when the phone was tilted slightly. Tilting and Dynamic Perspective can also be used in apps and for web browsing -- scrolling through items, zooming in, pulling up menus, and more. There's an autoscroll feature that will scroll through web pages and books automatically, which Jeff Bezos called "incredibly natural." Amazon is releasing a Dynamic Perspective SDK for developers today.

Also included with the phone is a new flagship feature called Firefly, a virtual recognition program able to recognize QR codes, barcodes, objects, and more, which facilitates the discovery and purchase of various items. Firefly is built directly into the Fire Phone with a dedicated button on the side.

On stage, Amazon demoed Firefly scanning barcodes, URLs, and products like games, keeping a record of what was scanned and allowing the info to be used to make purchases, phone calls, and more. Firefly is also able to listen to music and recognize audio like TV shows, much like Siri can now do with Shazam, and it's also able to recognize art, pulling up a Wikipedia page for a painting.

It's a fully featured recognition system that can even read street signs and phone numbers from a distance. According to Amazon, it recognizes a hundred million different items in real world situations, and provides a button so users can buy most of them on the spot. There's also a Firefly SDK that developers can utilize to build Firefly into apps.

firefly
As for the phone's UI, it includes an app grid that lets users pin content like books, apps, magazines, and more, and there's also a scrollable carousel of apps at the top of the screen and four common apps on the bottom of the phone's interface. The phone also includes active widgets that can be used when opening a full app is unnecessary.

Both the Kindle Fire's Second Screen and X-Ray feature work on the Fire phone, and users are able to "fling" video from the phone to the Amazon TV, while X-Ray gives details on whatever is being watched. HBO Go, Netflix, YouTube, ESPN, and more are all supposed in addition to Amazon's own video services.

The Fire Phone will also support Amazon's new Prime music service, which the company launched last week, as well as music from Spotify, Pandora, and iHeartMusic, and it will include Kindle and Audible support. Much like the latest Fire tablets, it supports Mayday, a free service that lets users contact customer support representatives for free.

Amazon's Fire Phone is exclusive to AT&T and will be priced at $199/$299 for 32/64GB of storage with a standard contract or carrier agreement. The price includes the phone, stay-flat cables, and premium magnetic earbuds. It can be pre-ordered from Amazon.com and is expected to begin shipping in July.

(Images courtesy of CNET)

Popular Stories

iOS 19 Mock WWDC25 Feature

iOS 19 Expected to Run on These iPhones

Monday March 31, 2025 5:28 pm PDT by
iOS 19 will not be available on the iPhone XR, iPhone XS, or the iPhone XS Max, according a private account on social media site X that has accurately provided information on device compatibility in the past. The iPhone XR, iPhone XS, and iPhone XS Max all have an A12 Bionic chip, so it looks like iOS 19 will discontinue support for that chip. All other iPhones that run iOS 18 are expected...
watchOS 11 Thumb 2 1

Apple Releases watchOS 11.4 With Sleep Alarm Update

Tuesday April 1, 2025 10:34 am PDT by
Apple today released watchOS 11.4, the fourth major update to the operating system that runs on the Apple Watch. watchOS 11.4 is compatible with the Apple Watch Series 6 and later, all Apple Watch Ultra models, and the Apple Watch SE 2. watchOS 11.4 can be downloaded on a connected iPhone by opening up the Apple Watch app and going to General > Software Update. To install the new software,...
AirPods Pro Firmware Feature

Apple Releases New Firmware for AirPods Pro 2 and AirPods 4

Monday March 31, 2025 11:27 am PDT by
Apple today released new firmware updates for all AirPods 4 and AirPods Pro 2 models. The new firmware is version 7E93, up from the 7B21 firmware that was installed on the AirPods Pro 2 and the 7B20 firmware available on the AirPods 4 and AirPods 4 with ANC. It is not immediately clear what new features or changes are included in the new firmware, but we'll update this article should we find ...
maxresdefault

Apple Releases iOS 18.4 With Priority Notifications, Ambient Music, New Emoji and More

Monday March 31, 2025 10:03 am PDT by
Apple today released iOS 18.4 and iPadOS 18.4, the fourth major updates to the iOS 18 and iPadOS 18 operating system updates that came out last year. iOS 18.4 and iPadOS 18.4 come two months after Apple released iOS 18.3 and iPadOS 18.3. Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more videos. The new software can be downloaded on eligible iPhones and iPads over-the-air by going to...
iPhone 17 Pro 34ths Perspective

iPhone 17 Pro Launching Later This Year With These 10 New Features

Sunday March 23, 2025 10:00 am PDT by
While the iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max are not expected to launch until September, there are already plenty of rumors about the devices. Below, we recap key changes rumored for the iPhone 17 Pro models as of March 2025: Aluminum frame: iPhone 17 Pro models are rumored to have an aluminum frame, whereas the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro models have a titanium frame, and the iPhone ...
Apple Card iPhone 16 Pro Feature

Visa and American Express Vying to Win Apple Card Deal in 'Fierce' Fight

Tuesday April 1, 2025 1:50 pm PDT by
Visa wants to pay Apple approximately $100 million to be the new payment network for the Apple Card, reports The Wall Street Journal. As of right now, the Apple Card is on the Mastercard payment network, but that is set to change because Apple is ending its partnership with Goldman Sachs. Both American Express and Visa are vying to replace Mastercard as Apple's card services provider, while...
iOS 18

Apple Seeds First Beta of iOS 18.5 to Developers

Wednesday April 2, 2025 10:11 am PDT by
Apple today seeded the first betas of upcoming iOS 18.5 and iPadOS 18.5 updates to developers for testing purposes, with the software coming just two days after Apple released iOS 18.4 and iPadOS 18.4. iOS 18.5 and iPadOS 18.5 can be downloaded from the Settings app on a compatible device by going to General > Software Update. We don't yet know what Apple is introducing in the iOS 18.5...

Top Rated Comments

netnothing Avatar
141 months ago
Apple take notice

Nobody wants the entry level iPhone to only have 16GB anymore!

32GB minimum unless it's a low end phone.

-Kevin
Score: 56 Votes (Like | Disagree)
AFDoc Avatar
141 months ago
Of course here comes the flood of comments saying how this feature is dumb and the phone sucks..... Of course if apple implements some of these features they will be awesome and revolutionary.

For the guy saying it looks familiar..... To what? Every rectangle phone made?
Score: 45 Votes (Like | Disagree)
larrylaffer Avatar
141 months ago
Pretty impressive looking device! Good to see more competition entering the fray.
Score: 32 Votes (Like | Disagree)
El Cabong Avatar
141 months ago
That design looks familiar. Can't put my finger on it, though.

Looks like a smartphone.

You're welcome.
Score: 29 Votes (Like | Disagree)
1Zach1 Avatar
141 months ago
Yeah, but Apple might have a pressure sensor, so there's that.
Score: 27 Votes (Like | Disagree)
MikeAnd Avatar
141 months ago
Can't believe the price of entry...

It's as much as an iPhone 5S or a Galaxy S5 (albeit with more storage). I thought for sure they'd try to shake up the market with low prices, a la Kindle Fire.

It might be a decent high-end smartphone – we won't know until it's reviewed – but at those price points it's going to meet with the same success as the HTC Facebook phone.
Score: 21 Votes (Like | Disagree)