Amazon Announces the Fire Phone

Amazon’s long-awaited smartphone is now finally official. Named as the Fire Phone, the handset features typical Android smartphone specs combined with clever software that helps it stand out from other models from other manufacturers. On the inside, the Firephone packs a Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 chipset with a 2.2GHz quad-core CPU, an Adreno 330 GPU and 2GB of RAM…



Amazon’s long-awaited smartphone is now finally official. Named as the Fire Phone, the handset features typical Android smartphone specs combined with clever software that helps it stand out from other models from other manufacturers.

On the inside, the Firephone packs a Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 chipset with a 2.2GHz quad-core CPU, an Adreno 330 GPU and 2GB of RAM. The phone’s 4.7-inch IPS display boasts 720p resolution with 590 nits of brightness. There’s also a 13MP f/2.0 camera at the back with a five-element lens and optical image stabilisation as well as a dedicated hardware button.

The phone is covered in Gorilla Glass 3 at the back and front while the sides are made from rubber. It also has two stereo speakers on the front with virtual surround sound and buttons made from anodized aluminium. The Fire Phone also features global LTE connectivity, Wi-Fi 802.11ac, Bluetooth and NFC.

Now aside from the 13MP and 2MP cameras at the back and front, the Fire Phone also sports four additional cameras at the front that’s used for its Dynamic perspective feature. The cameras are placed at the four corners of the phone and track your eyes and changes what’s displayed on the phone based on your position relative to the phone.

Amazon is also bringing some of its services into the Fire Phone. On one hand, the retail giant is adding its Mayday customer service support line as well as Amazon Prime membership. There’s also this feature called Firefly which uses the phone’s camera or microphone to recognise things around you and find them in Amazon’s database so you can purchase them. Firefly works with a number of products including books, TV shows, songs, etc.

The Amazon Fire Phone will exclusively ship to AT&T in the US for around US$679 off-contract. There’s no word yet if Amazon will ship it outside the US.

Get the freshest tech news from CyberShack