First came the Kindle. Then the Kindle Fire tablet. Now, Amazon is raising eyebrows again with a smartphone that looks radically different than what many might have expected.
What are allegedly the first photos of the Amazon smartphone, reportedly code-named Hologram, recently surfaced online. They showed a device that appears to integrate six digital cameras and a 4.7-inch display.
On the whole, developers on Twitter sounded less than impressed by what they saw, though there was a general feeling that Amazon was going to be a major competitive threat.
Watch out Apple, Samsung and Google, Amazon is joining the party with #3D featured smartphone http://t.co/jZogYSj8xR #iphone #FireOS
— Kevin Yu (@kevincyu) April 15, 2014
The Amazon smartphone will allegedly be able to track the 3D movements of its owner's head, a piece of functionality that confused as much as it intrigued.
Amazon's psuedo 3d camera. Even if it's fake Amazon's taking a page from Apple's marketing plan http://t.co/aU9GTLJrUK
— Ivar Chan (@ivarchan) April 16, 2014
Is #3D the next trend in smartphones and #android? @amazon seems to think so. - http://t.co/oOHuG8Vjud
— Immersion Developers (@HapticsDev) April 16, 2014
Though Amazon clearly hopes to shake up the smartphone market, there were already concerns about what it would mean from a platform and development perspective.
Another forked version of Android :). http://t.co/Wr9MQvzwdZ via @techcrunch
— Paul Byrom (@pbyrom) April 16, 2014
And while Amazon's design may have an eye on the future, there was more than one developer on Twitter who suggested the smartphone might be a little too much like what came before it.
Heh. Looks like a Nokia N9 or Lumia 800 ... RT @boygenius: First ever pictures of Amazon's smartphone on @BGR http://t.co/bZU2rK0vkz
— Jan Ole Suhr (@janole) April 15, 2014