
Live From Amazon’s Phone Event - aashaykumar92
http://techcrunch.com/2014/06/18/amazon-phone-live-blog/
======
GrantS
As a computer vision researcher, I am impressed that Amazon has made the most
computer-vision-centric mobile device seen to date. I have no idea if it will
catch on, but having a dedicated physical button for object recognition is
huge insofar as it means they actually intend for people to be using this all
the time, so they'll only be devoting more and more energy to recognizing
everything in the world. Sure, it's mostly so you can then buy those things
from Amazon, but I have to think there will be other useful applications given
the provided recognition SDK.

I'm also curious if developers will have direct access to the four corner
cameras on the front, and if the head-tracking it uses for 3D visual effects
includes detailed eye/pupil-tracking -- if it doesn't yet, you can be sure
that's planned for the future.

Edit: So the dedicated recognition button will already pull up wikipedia
entries for recognized works of art. I wonder if they'll ever let third party
developers hook into the hardware button so that third party plant-
recognition, insect-recognition, action-figure recognition (etc) app results
can be called up with that single button push in case Amazon doesn't recognize
a purchasable item.

~~~
ctdonath
6 cameras total. Sounding like a razor...

~~~
smackfu
Although it seems like the only reason for four on the front is so that you
can block two with your hand and still have two left for distance finding.

~~~
RyJones
Correct. The four front-facing cameras are low res, b&w, low framerate.

ETA: I worked on this feature for lab126.

~~~
ctdonath
Any chance apps can use raw imagery from those cameras? can imagine some
pretty nifty uses (say, true live 3d videophone: use cameras to construct 3d
model from low res data, then map color image onto model, just have to
transmit already-sent video feed plus modest model data).

~~~
RyJones
The API is open as of today, and I suspect you only get information on the
events (looked [direction]; peeked [direction]), not raw data.

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ashbrahma
This phone is exclusive to AT&T. Not sure why this late in the game they would
want to sell only through one carrier and that too AT&T!

~~~
eli
They probably get ads and displays in the retail stores. I think it'd be hard
to launch a new phone brand without a retail presences even for Amazon.

~~~
jusben1369
I thought this was a good point until I realized the traffic Amazon has to
it's home page and how many of it's devices are Top 5 sellers in major
categories. Still, you could be right that they wanted even _more_ than just
Amazon alone could do for the phone.

~~~
eli
Google has a pretty popular homepage too, but I bet having the phones
available in stores led to more sales.

(Well, OK, and they were also really cheap or sometimes free with a new plan.)

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fumar
I am looking at this from a media consumption perspective. While Apple,
Google, and Microsoft (and OEMS) try to out do each other in the spec race.
Amazon has always catered to users consumer habits. From their early beginning
selling books to their entrance (dominance) with digital books, Amazon has
always focused on facilitating content/media/physical goods consumption. The
Kindle Fire tablets have led up to this phone. This phone will succeed in
facilitating users to purchase from Amazon and Amazon alone.

~~~
Afforess
How is this any different than what, say, Apple does? Even Google is onboard
the closed "experience" these days.

~~~
fumar
Apple is not facilitating the "purchase" of goods either digital or physical
with one button on the iPhone. Bezos did outline the phone's specs, but the
goal was to show the audience how the phone can "see" the world around itself.
The phone is the first consumer product to be aware of its surroundings. It
uses the data to ease purchases for the user. MY Nexus 5 makes search easy
with google now, voice commands, and chrome. But this phone will make buying
easy, in theory. Like I mentioned above, I am not looking at this from the
perspective of the smartphone market. As in will it do well or will tech
bloggers like it. But, as in will the end user find it easier to purchase
goods using the physical world as intent triggers.

~~~
dublinben
The iPhone is very cleverly designed to facilitate purchases in the iTunes and
iOS App stores. You need to register the device with an account and credit
card just to use it. If that's not a seamless consumer experience, I don't
know what is.

~~~
soapdog
This phone allows you to point your device to basically anything "media" and
buy it. Pointing the phone at the television, identifying the actor on TV and
buying some movie is a very powerful feature for people interested in
consuming media...

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suprgeek
Surprisingly high price, even on contract! I was thinking they would pull
another Prime tie-in (say $49 as long as you are on prime and do not cancel).

Also in this day and age, being AT&T exclusive is a real puzzler. What does
Amazon hope to gain by this?

Jeff is usually lauded for his OOTB thinking but here we see all the hall
marks of following the very beaten path...

Edit: And there it is! Includes a year of prime with the price of the phone
(as revealed at the end)

~~~
jusben1369
" And there it is! Includes a year of prime with the price of the phone (as
revealed at the end)"

\- That seems different though to your initial point that the phone itself
would be cheap hardware as long as you're tied to a service subscription
(Prime) This is the other way around.

~~~
smackfu
Since the year of Prime can be used by existing Prime customers, it seems
about the same. If you have Prime already, and plan to renew, buying this
phone would only cost you $99 more than not buying it.

~~~
dman
Dont forget the contract.

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untog
$200 price point is silly for a device that seems to be fine-tuned to make you
buy things. They should be selling it at a loss, not charging the same as an
iPhone.

~~~
jusben1369
I don't mean this in an Apple snarky way but maybe they'll pull an Apple and
price it high for a short period of time and then drop the price after the
early adopters. That way you can sort of have your cake and eat it too.
Buyer's of the phone don't feel 'bad' carrying it around based on it being "of
that's that cheap Amazon phone" Avoid the problem the 5C seemed to run into.

~~~
gtremper
Classic price discrimination.

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jusben1369
So far there's nothing all that new or earth shattering. (although those no
tangle earbuds look nice) I felt like this phone was going to be super tied in
to payments but so far no. I wonder if it's a smartphone aimed at the 'rest of
us' who are intimidated by iPhone and Android?

~~~
ctdonath
Numerous cameras used to track user's viewpoint, allowing fake (but good) 3D.

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JohnTHaller
It's $199 with a 2 year contract with AT&T, meaning it's a $649 phone (now
confirmed). It's priced with other 'premium' phones like the iPhone 5S and the
Galaxy S5 (both $199 with a 2 year contract, $649 off contract at AT&T).
Unfortunately, Amazon's other products like the Kindle Fire are anything but
premium hardware and software-wise. On the software side this is partially due
to the Amazon-first mentality for all media and partially due to the extremely
clunky Amazon UI and app store. Then again, I wouldn't consider Samsung a
'premium' phone software-wise either due to my poor experience with the Galaxy
S4's clunky setup after coming form 'pure' Android. It's still far better than
the Kindle Fire, though.

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Nicholas_C
No word on the battery. Will this be yet another phone I have to strategically
place chargers in my car, office, and home for because it's down to 15% by
2PM?

~~~
akilism
thank you. who cares about 3D lock screens if it's not even going to make it
through a day on a single charge.

Look at all these amazing features....you will need to turn off in case you
want to actually use this as a phone....

~~~
Nicholas_C
My thoughts as well. I despise that every new phone can't last a whole day of
heavy use without a charge. It is the pits when I'm at a music festival or
some other event and my phone starts to die midday. I just need access to my
favorite apps and an OK camera, I'd give up almost every feature other than
those for stellar battery life. Other features are great but let's focus on
battery life.

~~~
smackfu
If it's just an occasional problem, I'd suggest getting one of those USB
battery packs. You can get something that will recharge your phone 3 or 4
times for $40.

Buyer's guide: [http://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-usb-battery-pack-
trave...](http://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-usb-battery-pack-travel/)

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ChikkaChiChi
I can't decide whether Amazon should be credited for trying out new things and
pushing technology forward or criticized for their stupid attempts at locking
you in to their infrastructure.

Fire TV was the same way. Cool device except that everything that wasn't
Amazon was a second class citizen.

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rickyc091
Ouch exclusive to AT&T + $199, 2 year contract. Anyone think this is going to
sell?

~~~
gecko
I think it'll do better than the Facebook HTC One, but I otherwise expect that
it's going to seriously struggle. Even an uneducated consumer will rapidly
realize that they don't have access to Google's apps, or Apple's apps, or even
many common third-party apps that they're used to having, and the contract
price puts it on par with an iPhone 5S/Samsung S5—i.e., it's got premium
pricing, despite its inferior ecosystem.

That said, I have to admit that being able to give my parents a smart phone
with 10-second delays to talk to a human is tempting. I've thought of giving
them a Fire tablet for the same reason.

~~~
dublinben
What does it say about their UX, that Amazon need to have human assistants one
click away? The iPad is so intuitive that toddlers, grandparents, and everyone
in between can figure it out in minutes.

~~~
bryanlarsen
Perhaps it says that "we're so confident that the UI is easy to use that we're
going to put our money where our mouth is and give you incredibly easy to use
live support".

It doesn't take very many minutes in support calls to completely eat any
profit Amazon has on a phone.

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ignostic
Everyone thought Amazon would undercut, but it makes sense that Amazon is
targeting high-end flagship phones with the device. They're definitely not
messing around. The 3d features are obviously unique, and the camera makes it
a serious contender for the 1-device crowd. The Android base gives it an
instant familiarity. It remains to be seen whether FireOS is going to be easy
to adopt.

I'm disappointed by the AT&T exclusivity, but I actually see good reasons
behind it. Amazon is new at phones, and they've had limited success with
advertising campaigns. AT&T is still big enough to throw money around, but
they're haemorrhaging users shockingly fast. AT&T has an incentive to market
Amazon's product, and they should be willing to given the success the iPhone
brought them. Amazon has something AT&T wants, and they'll pay for it once
with the contract and twice for advertising. AT&T will basically offer Amazon
a strong market foothold.

The announcement said the screen was 720p and the product page says 1080p. Was
this just a mistake from Bezos?

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isaacn
Here's a link to the Amazon detail page for the Fire Phone:
[http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00EOE0WKQ](http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00EOE0WKQ)

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aresant
"Unlimited Free Photo Storage" is huge.

I would estimate that 80% of my current DropBox capacity is photos alone.

I hope Amazon nails this and forces Apple & DropBox to respond.

~~~
gecko
EDIT: Nope, I'm wrong; as pointed at below, Apple charges $1/month for
unlimited service, whereas Amazon's offering it free.

INCORRECT FORMER COMMENT: Apple has already thrown unlimited photo storage
into iOS 8
([http://www.apple.com/ios/ios8/photos/](http://www.apple.com/ios/ios8/photos/)),
so I'd say they've responded preemptively. :)

~~~
berberous
I thought the same thing and almost posted your exact comment, but if you
click the second slide, it says:

"iCloud Photo Library helps you make the most of the space available on your
iOS device, so you can spend more time shooting pictures and less time
managing them. It can automatically keep the original high-resolution photos
and videos in iCloud and leave behind lightweight versions that are perfectly
sized for each device. You get 5GB of iCloud storage free, and other storage
plans will start at $0.99 per month."

So it would appear that Apple is making a more seamless way to store and view
all your photos on iCloud rather than on device, but is still charging you if
you exceed 5GB worth.

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denzil_correa
I am eager to see the tangle free design for earphones via flat cables. I hope
it is not a PR stunt.

Context -
[http://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/img_4425...](http://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/img_4425.jpg?w=680)

~~~
bentcorner
You can wrap arbitrary headphones using your hands into a tangle-free design
without the aid of a billionaire. It unfolds very easily:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DaXcNzxAB00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DaXcNzxAB00)

I don't bother tying them off (I stop around 0:45), and just bunch it up and
stuff it in my pocket. When I pull out my headphones they are never, ever
tangled.

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Fuzzwah
The head tracking controlled perspective changes in 3D games seems like it'll
be awesome.

~~~
WalterSear
Do you swing your head or phone about while you play video games? Why do you
expect to?

~~~
Fuzzwah
The phone mostly.....

The one mobile game which I have poured a lot of time into is Real Racing 3.
Tilting the phone like a steering wheel for analogue driving input is awesome.

Combine that with head tracking to allow analogue acceleration and breaking
control by tilting the phone forwards and backwards would be excellent.

On the other axis I can image controlling the view point slightly to allow
looking to your left and right, even just checking wing mirrors.

And those thoughts are just about a game which already exists. I can also
start to dream about game mechanics which haven't been possible until head
tracking......

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jsumrall
Not sure why they would only want to sell this in the US. This exclusive deal
with ATT ruins any chance of this being successful in this age of contract
free phones and the cheap Nexus line.

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mrbill
I would have ordered it instantly at up to $199 carrier-free.

$199 with a 2-year ATT contract? Pfft. No way (and I'm a long-time Prime
customer with a FireTV and multiple Kindles).

~~~
smackfu
But you are talking about a $199 phone vs. a $650 phone. The features on those
phones are going to be wildly different.

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chiph
Video predictive caching? I would assume this isn't on the phone, unless they
got a sweetheart bandwidth deal with AT&T.

~~~
abat
They could cache over wifi (eg sequential tv episodes for binge watchers) and
actually decrease use of cellular bandwidth.

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talles
Anyone wonders why on earth they (Amazon) don't live stream it? I see only
benefits in doing it...

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chrisBob
What does $27/month mean? Surely no one would pay $27/month instead of $199 up
front.

~~~
nathos
The $27/month via AT&T Next doesn't lock you into a 2-year service contract.

Actually, the current AT&T Next offering isn't bad, they simply take the full
price of the phone and divide by 20 or 24 months.

If you cancel service before the end of the period, you owe the balance of the
price of the phone. It's essentially a 0% loan for the phone.

(BTW, the $27/month installment price means the Fire Phone's real price is
~$650)

~~~
smackfu
And the second important thing is that if you are on a 10 GB or higher Mobile
Share Value plan, an off-contract smart phone costs you $15 instead of $40.

[https://www.att.com/shop/wireless/data-
plans.html](https://www.att.com/shop/wireless/data-plans.html)

So, on Next, you pay $27 per month for the phone, but $25 less for the plan,
so $2 more a month or a total of $48. And you need to pay sales tax on the
phone, so that's another $50 or so. But the contract plan had to pay $199 up
front. So you come out about $100 ahead over the life of the contract.

