A good view of the Amazon smartphone

What’s the one thing missing from today’s tech lifestyle? That’s right, another smartphone! At least that is what Amazon is betting on when it launches its own phone later this year. There have been a few photos of phone’s hardware in the last month, but it appeared that there was some type of case obscuring details of the device’s appearance. The folks over at BGR have managed to snag a nice, clear image of Amazon’s yet unnamed smartphone.

I find it interesting that Amazon is choosing to place the camera on the right (looking at the back). I’m curious whether there is a reason. Do other smartphones place the camera there? Anyhow, according to the article, the following are a few of the phone’s specs;

• 4.7-inch display with 720p HD resolution

• a quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon processor

• 2GB of RAM

• six individual camera modules

• a highly customized version of Google’s Android operating system similar to the one seen on Amazon’s various Kindle Fire tablets

Those 6 camera modules are intriguing. There are some other key reasons Amazon’s offering should not be overlooked. Those camera modules are part of a unique, new gesture based software used to navigate on the phone. These tracking cameras and other sensors will allow the user to experience a variety of 3D effects on the device. BGR also explains some of the motion tracking features;

“By tilting the handset in different directions while the device is in use, Amazon’s interface will display additional information on the screen without the user having to touch or tap anything. This will not only be a point of differentiation for the company’s phone lineup, but also a way for larger devices such as Amazon’s upcoming 4.7-inch flagship phone to be operated more comfortably with one hand.” 

Tilting gestures will perform numerous actions relevant to each app that utilizes the feature. For example, tilting the phone left or right while reading a book in the Kindle app will turn pages back and forth. Another tilt gesture will bring up a menu of other commands. Tilting can also reveal labels or additional information about a location looked up on a map. It should be interesting to see how convenient this feature really is during real say-to-day usage. More gesture example can be found here. Speaking of apps, Amazon will be introducing its own mobile app store for getting app onto the phone. No word as to whether Google Play access will be available.

Finally, sources say that Amazon will introduce a special data plan that it refers to as “Prime Data.” Current speculation, since no details have been released, is that the phone may be exclusive to AT&T and Prime Data may offer months services such as a certain amount of Prime video and music streaming free of charge. This would presumably mean no data caps, at least for those services. More info will no doubt become available in the coming months, but with the expectation of a third quarter release, will Amazon try to go head-to-head with the release of Apple’s iPhone 6? It should be an exciting Fall for the mobile space.