The Wall Street Journal reports that Amazon is planning to announce its first entry to the smartphone market in June. The possibility of an Amazon phone has been a long-running rumor, but recently sources claimed that the company had partnered with HTC to finally produce the device.
Following the launch of the Fire TV earlier this month, the Amazon phone will mark the second of Apple’s product categories the online retailer hopes to invade in 2014. With its Kindle Fire tablets, Amazon has been attempting to position itself to compete with the iPad for a few years.
The Amazon device will reportedly feature a display capable of creating 3D images without the need for glasses, according to the WSJ report:
They said the phone would employ retina-tracking technology embedded in four front-facing cameras, or sensors, to make some images appear to be 3-D, similar to a hologram, the people said.
Other manufacturers have tried 3D displays before, but notably none have successfully managed to bring the technology to the mainstream. Whether Amazon’s phone will be able to overcome the stigma associated with those previous models will be an interesting point to watch.
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.
Competition is a good thing
What about Android is “competition”?
>>retina-tracking technology embedded in four front-facing cameras, or sensors, to make some images appear to be 3-D
What kind of complete idiocy is this?! Just use an autostereoscopic display like the Nintendo 3DS has! It cannot possibly be this difficult to comprehend. Why would anyone want a phone that IS CONSTANTLY RECORDING THEM WHILE IN USE?!
You’re indeed correct. The notification center, app switcher, and many other features we enjoy on iOS indeed indeed came from the competition.
Yea because 3D is the greatest thing ever! Just look at how 3D televisions exploded!
They did work out really well for Nintendo on their 3DS. Perhaps, Amazon thinks they can exploit a niche in the convergence between smart phone and handheld gaming platforms. Nintendo has hinted that they might have to pursue other platforms. A 3D smart phone from Amazon would be the only viable candidate for porting 3DS games over.
>>They did work out really well for Nintendo on their 3DS.
Which is why Amazon decided to use completely different technology that is an even more pathetic gimmick than 3DTVs.
I haven’t been able to find a site that describes the 3-D technology being proposed. Where did you find it?
Retina tracking must have nothing to do with 3D. Unless its lenticular 3D, this sounds like BS.
Read about the Nintendo 3DS. Retina tracking is used in order to determine the angle that the user is looking into the display. From that, the graphics card moves the virtual camera. In combination with the lenticular glass, retina tracking allows the display to create the illusion of having many unique views under the lens when, in fact, there are only two.
+1
Oooooo!
Some batt-draining gimmick in a phone that will drown in the Android Sea.
FAIL.
Shouldn’t an article about an android phone be in a different forum? This is 9to5Mac, not 9to5Google.
I like hearing about upcoming devices and tech from any company. I don’t want to have blinders on so I only read things about Apple. That’s how radical biases are formed.
But I go to other tech sites for non apple news anyway
remember a few months ago when all the media was say Jeff Bezos was the next Jobs. i mean delivery by drone, kindle fire, FireTV and now a phone. come’on amazon has to be the cheapest backward thinking company out there.
I wouldn’t go that far. For all we know, HTC may have had a tone of 3-D displays sitting around from some previous, unreleased model, and Amazon just got a really great deal on them. There is also zero risk for any of the products you listed above since there are probably just reselling them on behalf of their manufacturer. Amazon’s only risk is the R&D on the software, but they clearly have a large group of programmers running their websites and their cloud service. The only thing unique in that list is the drone delivery, but even Google has made a very heavy investment into robotics. So Amazon is just keeping up with the Joneses.
there is always risk with any product release. the products i listed are piggyback products that they relay on ad revenue to make a profit. BTW is amazon search fixed yet. they need to better the products they have before trying to keep up with everyone
Android skinned to a level that makes it undesirable to anyone who actually likes android for what it is OPEN.
What is the practical use of looking at a 3D screen in a phone?