Well guys its official, Amazon have finally ventured into the smartphone market with the introduction of the Fire Phone. In what was the worst kept secret in history, Amazon have seemingly been developing their own Smartphone for a while. The Fire Phone will join Amazons other Fire products but brings with it a host of new features. What is particularly interesting is the new head tracking 3D display. More on this later. 
The device sports a 4.7 inch 720p IPS display and is powered by a 2.2 GHZ quad core processor with an Adreno 330 GPU in tow. Theres also 2GB RAM and it will be available in either 32GB or 64GB external memory configurations. The Fire Phone also has a 13MP camera on the back with a physical camera key, a f/2.0 lens and support for optical stabilization. Amazon claims that the Fire Phone will take better pictures than its competitors and performs flawlessly in all conditions. The camera also has the ability to capture 1080p video but no 4K support.
In the sound department Amazon have things sorted with the inclusion of two stereo speakers and support for virtual Dolby Digital Plus surround sound. What is pretty cool is that Amazon are throwing in some pretty nifty knot-free headphones which they claim are better quality than what you get with the average smartphone.
What is particularly interesting is the new head tracking technology. The Fire Phone is slated as having a 3D user interface but is very much a different offering to what we have seen in the past. The USP here is phone uses 4 cameras to track the movement of your head and will change the picture depending on how you look at it. This also has some other cool implications including one particular feature which allows you to change the perspective of maps by tilting the phone.
Theres another key feature known as Firefly. This heavily integrated feature uses the camera in recognising pretty much anything from books to food. It basically acts as your all in one search facility and will make use of the camera and microphone in finding what it is that you looking for. This feature will be heavily linked into the Amazon store and clearly represents a source of income for the company. Amazon boasts that Firefly is capable of recognising a hundred million different items and clearly this will be attractive to developers. There is even a dedicated hardware button.
The Fire Phone runs on a heavily customised version of Android known as Fire OS 3.5 and will link in seamlessly with other Amazon services. Its also worth noting that the Fire Phone ships with unlimited cloud storage.
The Fire Phone is currently exclusive to AT&T in the US and is available to purchase today on a 2 year contract for $199. No word on UK pricing yet.
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