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Showing posts with label phone. Show all posts
Showing posts with label phone. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 23, 2017
Thursday, October 30, 2014
Flipboard Finally Ditches Its iPad Roots With a Smarter Phone App
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Thursday, October 16, 2014
Motorola’s Moto X Should Be Your Next Android Phone
As we enter the era of the ubiquitous Big Phone, it’s refreshing to hold something like the slim and light second-generation Moto X. Priced at $500 unlocked and about $99 with a contract, this 5.2-inch phone with 1080p OLED screen and Gorilla Glass front is a step beyond the latest from LG and, while not as feature-rich as the Samsung Galaxy S5, well worth a look as an upgrade to your Android arsenal.
I used this phone primarily with the Moto 360 and carried it for a week or so while testing the watch. The model I used, a handsome gray and steel device with a little dimple on the back to help position your finger, is just one of the many permutations available at Motorola’s Moto Maker page. The company, which is still on thin ice, at least in terms of market share, has thrown everything it can into materials. By allowing you to add a pink leather or bamboo back and a colorful trim, they hope to make these Motos yours (and, presumably, reduce returns.)
The phone has only two buttons – a rocker for the volume and a single activity button on the right side. The back sports a large 13-megapixel camera and a smaller 2-megapixel camera adorns the front. The phone makes use of the camera in unusual ways. For example, you can wake the phone by moving your hand in front of it to see notifications and you can wake the phone and talk to it by setting a unique “wake up call,” “Hey, Moto, what’s up?” for example. These two features are a bit unnerving at first because the phone consistently perks up while it’s at rest. However, the features didn’t reduce battery life and I saw the phone last about a day on one charge – about average for similar smartphones.
Tuesday, October 14, 2014
MIT’s Slick New UI Lets Your Phone and Desktop Screens Behave as One
For all the ways the influx of new devices has streamlined our harried lives, it’s produced a parallel problem: the fracturing of our digital ones. What happens on your phone or tablet or computer are siloed experiences that rarely overlap in any meaningful or helpful way. But just think, what if your devices could interact with each other so seamlessly that one screen essentially becomes the other?
This scenario is inching closer to reality with THAW, the newest project out of MIT’s Media Lab. THAW is a program that allows your smartphone and desktop computer to interact with each other so fluidly it’s as though they share the same silicon brain. In the video you watch as files are dragged from a desktop computer and dumped onto an iPhone. In another scene you see a Mario-like video game being played on the desktop only to transfer to the iPhone without skipping a beat. It’s totally trippy, and a little bit surprising. Which is weird because interaction like this is about as intuitive as it comes.
THAW is the product of a collaboration between Sang-won Leigh and Philipp Schoessler, both students out of MIT’s Media Lab (Leigh is from the Fluid Interfaces Group and Schoessler is out of the Tangible Media Group, which produced a shape-shifting tabletop earlier this year). The exploration into THAW began after the team started wondering how just how harmonious our digital interactions could become. “We own multiple devices—we have a phone, we have a laptop, now everyone is going to have a watch,” says Schoessler. “We think they need to be ways to more seamlessly integrate everything.
The technology behind THAW is straightforward. The software overlays a rainbow colored grid on your computer screen, and using the iPhone’s back-facing camera, the phone is able to detect what area of the monitor it’s hovering over. The two devices connect wirelessly and transfer information back and forth to communication position. “We’re displaying the pattern only behind where the phone’s camera is looking; it’s like a peep hole you can see through,” explains Leigh. “When you move the phone around, the peep hole follows your position and the phone can see the color pattern through the peep hole.”
In some ways, THAW is a lot like Bump, the now-defunct app that let you share files, photos and contact information by bumping phones together. But THAW’s potential extends beyond simply transferring information; it turns immaterial digital data into something tangible, something that can be manipulated with your hands. You see a good example of this in the video, when Leigh turns his phone into a stepping box for the tiny polar bear avatar in the video game he developed. Faced with an insurmountable task of reaching a new platform, the polar bear uses the iPhone as a stepping ladder, hopping higher and higher as Leigh raises the iPhone.
Despite its wow-factor, the guys have no plans to commercialize the software. In fact, they say they’re leaning towards making it open source, if only to see what other applications can come out of it. “We don’t really think of it as a product,” says Schoessler. “We’ve really just touched the surface of the applications—I think it would be nice to see what other people might come up with.”
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Wednesday, August 6, 2014
Video Claims To Show Off The Live Folders Feature Coming In Windows Phone 8.1 Update 1
Component to Windows Phone 8.1’s first update — Update 1, of course — are Live Folders, which will allow users of Microsoft’s smartphone platform to group applications on the main screen of their handsets, saving space.
It’s part of a larger set up feature upgrades that Update 1 will bring. Microsoft has only released screenshots to date.
A video, uploaded by Windows Phone Lovers, shows off a purported demo of the feature that appears to mostly agree with Microsoft’s own supplied images of the capability. The demo is in a different language than the provided images, so there is some discrepancy. However, the larger Windows Phone community is treating the leak as genuine.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the video was real, but as with all potentially-specious leaks, consume the below video with incredulity.
Monday, August 4, 2014
Unlocking Your Cell Phone In The U.S. Is Officially Legal Again
For the past 2 years, unlocking your cell phone without your carrier’s permission has, for absolutely ridiculous reasons, been illegal in the United States.
Not anymore!
As we covered at greater depth last week, the US Congress and Senate were both in agreement that unlocking a cell phone should not be an illegal act (punishable by up to 5 years in jail, no less!)
The only thing left was for the President to put his stamp on it. Consider it done. The bill is set to be reviewed every 3 years so things may very well change moving forward — but for now, you’re good.
So go! Be free! As long as your phone is paid in full (read: you can’t just go grab a phone at a deep discount then disappear into the ether), you’re free to unlock it without that lingering fear that you might be that one person who actually gets busted for something so dumb.
[Original Image by Miki Yoshihito, used under CreativeCommons; image has been modified]
Sunday, August 3, 2014
Looks Like HTC Is Building A Windows Phone Version Of Their Best Android Phone
Word around the ol’ rumor mill was that HTC was working on a version of their flagship HTC One (M8) that ran Windows Phone instead of Android.
Sure enough, an image hidden away on Verizon’s servers (as spotted by PCMag) seems to confirm it. Thats certainly the face of the HTC One, and that’s most certainly Windows Phone. The name of the image itself is even “HTC_M8_Windows”.
No word yet on when the device would actually ship, though our brothers-from-another-mother-though-maybe-its-really-the-same-mother-because-we’re-all-a-part-of-AOL over at Engadget had previously heard that VZW was aiming for September at the latest.
HTC has a press event scheduled for August 19th. Hopefully this wasn’t the (sole) focus of that event.
Saturday, June 28, 2014
Google Makes Phone Logins Easier With Personal Login Feature For Android L
Google showed off a few new features of the next version of Android. While the company didn’t say all that much about the new features and instead focused on the new design language, Google director of engineering Dave Burke did show off Android’s new personal login feature.
Instead of having to use a pattern or PIN to log in, the phone will now know whether it is in a trusted environment. It’ll look for your smartwatch, for example, or your home Wi-Fi network. If it sees those, it won’t ask you to authenticate and just give you a basic lock screen instead. If you’re somewhere new — or you’re not wearing your smartwatch — it will still ask you for you lock-screen pattern.
With this, Google is obviously playing on Apple’s built-in fingerprint scanner on the iPhone.
Monday, June 23, 2014
Boot up: Fire Phone reactions, Track Changes online, Surface Mini lives!
Movie poster for Forbidden Planet (1956) featuring Robbie the Robot. Photograph: Ronald Grant ArchiveA burst of 11 links for you to chew over, as picked by the Technology team
People misremember the iPhone as some sort of hallelujah moment when it was announced in January 2007. It wasn't. It was panned by a lot of people when it was first announced for various reasons. The 3 aforementioned ones plus it had a poor camera, no MMS, no video recording, no apps and the back looked ugly!
Everyones waiting for these giant leaps. These clear cut "whoa I just witnessed the unveiling of the Next Big Thing" don't really happen all that often. Yet the industry still keeps moving forward, it evolves. I see each of these events as baby steps along the way.
Q. It sounds like you've been using the Fire phone as your own phone. What were you using before, and what's it been like to use this?
A. Well, Samsung. And the thing I've noticed is when I switch back to another phone, I'm still reaching for the gestures that work so reliably on Fire phone, like autoscroll.
For the design team, invention is about stepping back and finding those things in technology that aren't ideal, but you're so inured to them that you don't realize they could probably be improved. Traditionally scrolling is not that good. It's often a two-handed gesture. You're interjecting your finger in front of the screen.
Once you get used to autoscrolling, you'll be trying to do it on another device — and that's a good sign.
First, just take a look at its square display, which measures 4.5 inches with a resolution of 1440x1440. Right below that is a QWERTY keyboard that's shorter and stretches wider than most other keyboards we've seen from the company. It's not entirely clear what BlackBerry is shooting for with the Passport; it's more or less a business class take on the phablet — a really, really square phablet. And it's so wide; even wider than Samsung's Galaxy Note 3. The BlackBerry Passport is due sometime this September, so for now all we can do is look and imagine trying to successfully hold it in one hand. Here's a photo of CEO John Chen miraculously pulling off that very feat.
They should provide a hinge in the middle and call it a laptop. Job done.
This is the document that inspired us to start Poetica. It contains all the feedback that author Maureen Evans received from her editor about the first draft of a cookbook, Eat Tweet, using Word's Track Changes feature.
Maureen's experience of trying to make sense of her editor's feedback was so frustrating that it got us thinking. How we could make something better: more natural, clear and expressive?
We realised that Track Changes frustrates many people, not just writers. It's used by everyone from students to corporate lawyers, and what they're trying to achieve is similar: they want quick, thoughtful and clear feedback on work they've done.
Basically, "track changes" and collaborative editing on Gmail, Gdrive, Word (Word?) and Wordpress.
Mary Jo Foley:
Microsoft made available for download on June 20 a Surface Pro 3 User Guide, meant to assist those buying the third-generation Intel-based Surface Pro 3 tablets, which are for sale starting today in the U.S. and Canada. That guide, as Windows Supersite's Paul Thurrott noted on Twitter, includes several mentions of the Surface Mini.
(My guess is the team writing the Surface Pro 3 user guide did some cutting and pasting from the guide meant to accompany the Surface Mini.)
From the mentions, it looks like the same pen that comes with the Surface Pro 3 also was going to ship with the Surface Mini. One of the handful of mentions, focused on the top button on the new pen, notes:
"Click the top button to open OneNote, even if your Surface is locked. Bluetooth technology links your Surface Pen to your Surface Mini or Surface Pro 3, so when you click the button, your Surface responds instantly."
Carolina Milanesi of analysts Kantar responds: "the market ain't ready for a Surface Mini."
Google has promised to reimburse a rescue helicopter crew for an unnecessary flight after one of their Wi-Fi balloons falling into the sea sparked an emergency response.
Police received a call at 11.25am from a member of public reporting that a plane had crashed into the sea off the Hurunui River mouth, near Cheviot. He mistook the balloon for a plane because a local pilot's aircraft had a parachute attached.
Locals took boats out to investigate, while police, Waimakariri-Ashley Lifeboat volunteers, Search and Rescue and the Westpac rescue helicopter responded.
The balloon was found floating in the sea. Police notified Google, as the balloon was too large for a local fisherman to pull out, and the sea was "quite rough".
Thirty Project Loon balloons were launched into the stratosphere from Tekapo in June last year. The helium-filled, 12-metre-high polyethylene balloons transmit free wi-fi signals. Their purpose is to reach people living in remote areas.
Google aims to have 300 to 400 of these balloons in operation. At this failure rate, that would mean a crashlanding almost every month on average.
Christensen hasn't responded in writing to the essay, but when I reached him by phone Thursday afternoon, it was clear he'd been thinking about it. Consistently described by those who know him as a generous and thoughtful and upbeat person, he is also capable of fury. "Keep asking me questions," he said, "it's helping me."
Bunny report: not happy. Do read through to his explanation of why he got it wrong on the iPhone. (He said it would be a flop.)
Eric Sofge:
The myth of robotic competence is based on a hunch. And it's a hunch that, for the most part, has been proven dead wrong by real-life robots.
Actual robots are devices of extremely narrow value and capability. They do one or two things with competence, and everything else terribly, or not at all. Auto-assembly bots can paint or spot-weld a vehicle in a fraction of the time that a human crew might require, and with none of the health concerns. That's their knife trick. But ask them to install upholstery, and they would most likely bash the vehicle to pieces.
Robot cars, at the moment, have a similarly savant-like range of expertise. As The Atlantic recently covered, Google's driverless vehicles require detailed LIDAR maps—3D models created from lasers sweeping the contours of a given roadway—to function. Autonomous cars have to do impressive things, like detecting the proximity of surrounding cars, and determining right of way at intersections. But they are algorithmically locked onto their laser roads. They stay the proscribed course, following a trail of sensor-generated breadcrumbs. Compared to what humans have to contend with, these robots are the most sheltered sort of permanent student drivers. No one is quizzing them by sending pedestrians or drunk drivers darting into their path, or diverting them through un-mapped, snow-covered country lanes. Their ability to avoid fatal collisions remains untested.
…I've talked to many roboticists and artificial intelligence researchers who were inspired by hyper-competent bogeymen, from 2001's HAL 9000 to the Terminator's T-800. The dream of robotic power is intoxicating. That the systems these scientists create are usually pale shadows of human competence is a mere fact of robotics
Today's must-read. (Thanks @HotSoup for the link.)
The seemingly innocuous appliances — all 224m of them across the nation — together consume as much electricity as produced by four giant nuclear reactors, running around the clock. They have become the biggest single energy user in many homes, apart from air conditioning.
Cheryl Williamsen, a Los Alamitos architect, has three of the boxes leased from her cable provider in her home, but she had no idea how much power they consumed until recently, when she saw a rating on the back for as much as 500 watts — about the same as a washing machine.
A set-top cable box with a digital recorder can consume as much as 35 watts of power, costing about $8 a month for a typical Southern California consumer. The devices use nearly as much power turned off as they do when they are turned on.
35W for 24hr for 30 days = 25.2kWh - so she pays 31.7c/kWH? That compares with over 20 pence/kWh in the UK as a typical consumer price.
A Georgia Tech student, together with two of his roommates, claims to have hacked Yo, the Poke-like app which has set some of Silicon Valley alight (though not others) in the last 48 hours. [See update below: Yo has confirmed it has been hacked].
The student emailed TechCrunch detailing what he alleges is the results of the hack: "We can get any Yo user's phone number (I actually texted the founder, and he called me back). We can spoof Yo's from any users, and we can spam any user with as many Yo. We could also send any Yo user a push notification with any text we want (though we decided not to do that)."
In no time at all, we'll be at the next stage of this cycle, where hacking will be blamed by an MP for an inappopriate Yo to someone else. Penultimate stage: bought by Facebook or Google for $---bn. Final stage: incorporated into some other app and never heard of again.
David Yanofksy:
no amount of nostalgia will change the plane's operating cost on an airline's balance sheet, or its sustainability report. The 747 is the least efficient wide-body plane flying, according to data reported by US operators—it burns more fuel per hour and per seat mile than any other wide-body commercial airliner. Filling these gigantic planes has been a bugbear for some airlines, even on major routes. And as travelers seek more flight-time options, airlines are opting for multiple departures per day with smaller planes.
Introduced in 1969, so it has lasted well.
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Sunday, June 22, 2014
Amazon Courts Fire Phone Developers With $15,000 In “Amazon Coins”
When Microsoft needed to convince developers to build mobile apps for its Windows Phone 8 platform, it took a familiar path: it offered them money to do so. Amazon, however, is going a different route – at least, for now. Instead of outright paying developers to update their apps to work with its newly launched smartphone, the Fire Phone, Amazon is offering up to $15,000 in “Amazon Coins” which developers can give away to their users.
The idea here is that in today’s crowded app marketplace, acquiring new users and keeping current users engaged can be very expensive. According to data from Fiksu, it currently costs app marketers $1.24 to get users to download and install an application on iOS, and $1.31 on Android. Those numbers don’t directly correlate to Amazon’s Appstore, but they give you the general idea of the costs involved in this industry.
With $15,000 available in “Coins” which can be distributed to users to get them to download a paid app or purchase in-app goods, participating developers gain access to a good chunk of change to help them with their marketing efforts.
Of course, there are more than a few caveats. The $15,000 is the cap per developer. Amazon is actually giving away 500,000 Amazon Coins (a $5,000 value) per app, with a maximum of three apps per developer. Developers can then create their campaigns in the Promotions Console to actively court their potential customers.
In addition, in order to qualify, developers can’t just submit a new app – or update their Fire tablet app – to support the new phone’s screen size. They actually have to dive in and use some of the features that Amazon introduced this week that differentiate its handset and software from competitors like Apple, Samsung and Google.
For example, all game developers who want to take advantage of this promotion will have to use the Dynamic Perspective SDK, which is what allows users to move their heads to perform specific on-screen actions. Amazon also says it’s not enough for game developers to simply swap out gestures or gyro functionality for head tracking. They actually have to create an “in-game experience” using the new technology to qualify.
Non-game apps will also need to use the SDK, or Foundation Controls, and all apps must implement an app widget to display contextual information to users when the app is in the front of the Carousel.
Developers have to get their apps submitted by July 18 to be included in the Appstore when the phone ships on July 25, Amazon notes.
Free Money, But Little Marketshare
Whether or not developers will go the extra mile for a phone that analysts are already predicting will struggle to compete remains to be seen, however.
An analyst at JP Morgan predicts that Amazon will only sell 2-3 million units this year, which, as Business Insider points out, means Apple (on track for 83.8 million iPhones this year) would sell more iPhones in two weeks than Amazon would sell in six months.
Despite the whirlwind of media coverage the Fire Phone received this week, Amazon introduced the newcomer with traditional pricing and payment options. The phone is only available through AT&T under a two-year contract, or can be bought unlocked for $649 – a price point that will only see very devoted Amazon consumers buying in.
Meanwhile, many were hoping Amazon would do something completely shocking, like giving the phone away for free or bundled with a Prime subscription. But as a colleague here joked, “even Bezos has limits on burning stacks of money.”
That being said, not everyone is writing off Fire Phone just yet. It may be early, and it may not ship in vast quantities this year, but it’s a big step in an interesting direction for the company: a phone that you’ll be able to point at anything, and then have it appear. The same day. Even groceries. Even television. Maybe dropped off by drone.
If Amazon chooses to put its full weight behind its smartphone and offer it at a reduced cost, or even with subsidized data, the phone’s potential looks much more promising.
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This Week On The TC Gadgets Podcast: Amazon Fire Phone, Ink & Slide, And Slingshot
The podcast is packed this week, with six of us talking over each other about some of the most exciting news of the week.
If you didn’t hear, Amazon launched its own smartphone called the Fire phone, complete with special shopping features and 3D effects. Adobe, meanwhile, introduced the Ink and Slide, a digital pen and ruler for artists and designers. And in true Facebook fashion, the social network launched a new app called Slingshot meant to compete with Snapchat. Oh, and Yo.
We discuss all this and more on this week’s episode of the TC Gadgets Podcast featuring John Biggs, Matt Burns, Jordan Crook, Natasha Lomas, Romain Dillet, and Darrell Etherington.
Have a good Friday, everybody!
We invite you to enjoy our weekly podcasts every Friday at 3 p.m. Eastern and noon Pacific. And feel free to check out the TechCrunch Gadgets Flipboard magazine right here.
Click here to download an MP3 of this show.
You can subscribe to the show via RSS.
Subscribe in iTunes
Intro Music by Mendhoan.
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Friday, June 20, 2014
Amazon’s Mayday Service On Fire Phone Means It Might Be Able To Sell Its Unique New Features
Amazon has brought Mayday to the Fire Phone, it announced today. The Mayday service offers one-tap access to customer service agents who can talk to phone users via video chat, and take over the screen on their devices to show them exactly how to do something, complete with annotations. The service is available 24 hours, and service representatives will respond to requests within 15 seconds, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said on stage.
It’s accessible from any screen on the Fire Phone via a simple pull-down of the menu from the top of the screen, in the same way you’d access notifications on an iPhone or Android device. Mayday is a big deal for Amazon, which recently shared stats about use of the service on its Kindle Fire HDX tablets. The company said that customer service agents generally respond in fewer than 10 seconds, which sounds like magic when you consider how long people generally have to wait on hold — often without even talking to a human — in most customer service scenarios.
Mayday is available free to all owners of the device, but its cost may be built into the cost of ownership; AT&T is going to charge $199 for the entry-level 32GB version, which is right up there with flagship devices from top-tier Android makers and the price of Apple’s iPhone at launch, despite the fact that on paper at least, its internal specs have more in common with last year’s Android flagships than today’s Galaxy S5, HTC One and others.
Fire Phone might need Mayday, too. It has a unique perspective-shifting 3D feature that makes it quite different from ordinary phones, as well as a dedicated Firefly button to let it identify products on the fly. These are not features that smartphone owners will be familiar with, and they could well require some explaining in order for new users to get comfortable operating them.
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AT&T Will Sell Amazon’s Fire Phone For $199 On A 2 Year Contract
Given that Amazon’s newly announced Fire Phone is largely one gigantic portal for Amazon to sell things (there’s a dedicated hardware button just for recognizing products!), some folks were betting on the device itself being free — or at least really, really cheap.
Alas, no such luck. Based on product pages that have just gone up on AT&T, it looks like the Fire will sell for roughly the same price you’d expect any other phone to go for on a two-year contract. Meanwhile, product pages that have just gone up on Amazon’s own site detail the off-contract prices.
As rumored, AT&T is getting this phone as a carrier exclusive.
The breakdown, so far:
$199 for the 32GB model on a 2-year contract, $649 without contract$299 for the 64GB model on a 2-year contract, $749 without contractThese prices may change as the announcement rolls on (Amazon still hasn’t officially confirmed the prices), but for now they’re looking accurate.
Update: Amazon has now confirmed the above prices.
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Hands-On With The Amazon Fire Phone
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Who in their right mind would buy Amazon’s Fire Phone?
Who in their right mind would buy Amazon’s Fire Phone? | ExtremeTech #colorbox,#cboxOverlay{display:none !important;}#leaderboard .lboard .topad{width:auto;}.article .title h2 ,.article{font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;}.extreme-share{float:left;margin:0 5px 15px !important;}.tags .taglist li a {font:12px/15px arial !important;}.tags .title {padding:3px 0 0 !important;}.tags li a {display:inline-block !important;}.visual .switcher li {overflow:hidden;line-height:17px;}.etech-newsletter .btn-signup {cursor:pointer;}.etech-newsletter span.message {font-weight:bold;}.article strong {font: 16px/22px ProximaNovaRgBold,arial,sans-serif;}(function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = "//connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js#xfbml=1"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);}(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk')); document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + (document.location.protocol == "https:" ? "https://sb" : "http://b") + ".scorecardresearch.com/beacon.js' %3E%3C/script%3E")); COMSCORE.beacon({ c1:2, c2:6885615, c3:"", c4:"", c5:"", c6:"", c15:"" }); ExtremeTechTop Searches:Windows 8AutosQuantumIntelTrending:LinuxWindows 8NASABatteriesAutomobiles
HomeComputingMobileInternetGamingElectronicsExtremeDealsExtremeTechComputingWho in their right mind would buy Amazon’s Fire Phone?Who in their right mind would buy Amazon’s Fire Phone?By Sebastian Anthony on June 19, 2014 at 9:38 amComment
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Fire Phone camera, versus Galaxy S5 and iPhone 5S.
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HomeComputingMobileInternetGamingElectronicsExtremeDealsExtremeTechComputingWho in their right mind would buy Amazon’s Fire Phone?Who in their right mind would buy Amazon’s Fire Phone?By Sebastian Anthony on June 19, 2014 at 9:38 amCommentShare This articleAs Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, strutted calmly around the stage in Seattle and reeled off the Fire Phone’s long, long list of features, I started to become inordinately excited. As a tech writer, I’ve always found it hard to not get excited at things like magnetic tangle-free headphones, stereo speakers, cloud-based computer vision (Firefly identification), and a head-tracking 3D interface. But as the dust settled and my pulse returned to normal and I begun to think less like techfreak and more like a rational human being, I started wondering: Who would actually buy Amazon’s Fire Phone? Would you? Would your friends? Would your mom?
On paper, the Fire Phone is a capable device. The tech specs are good, but not top-notch — for its flagship price of $200-on-contract you’d expect flagship specs, but both the screen and SoC are lacking. The camera, a 13-megapixel unit with optical image stabilization (OIS), sounds quite exciting. Curiously there’s 802.11ac WiFi, but no support for Bluetooth 4.0/LE. There’s no removable battery or micro SD card slot. Hardware-wise, the Fire Phone is a bit like a weaker, less attractive HTC One M8… but priced the same, for some reason.
Fire Phone camera, versus Galaxy S5 and iPhone 5S.Amazon hopes that two new features will make up for the Fire Phone’s rather optimistic pricing: Firefly and Dynamic Perspective. Firefly uses the rear camera to identify objects and phone numbers. This feat of computer vision is apparently done in Amazon’s cloud, rather than on the phone (good for battery consumption, bad for data usage). The idea is that you can point your Fire Phone at a bag of jerky or a DVD, and then buy it on Amazon via your phone. Dynamic Perspective uses some forward-facing infrared cameras to track your head, and then alters the phone’s display to give the impression of 3D.
Killer features, or just gimmicks?
Firefly is predicated on the idea that users really want to scan and buy stuff while they walk around. Amazon would absolutely love it if we all started one-click buying things with Firefly, but I’m not sure if that’s what consumers want. I’m sure there will be times when Firefly comes in handy, but I don’t know how many people out there would buy an Amazon phone specifically for it. As we covered earlier today, you are making a big concession when you opt for Amazon’s Fire OS instead of Android or iOS. Does anyone remember Google Goggles?
Dynamic Perspective is neat, but I worry about its long-term usefulness. It’s not full glasses-free 3D like the 3DS; rather, it just lets you “peek” around objects by tilting your phone or moving your head. The problem is, apps will have to be specifically tailored to support Dynamic Perspective. On stage, Amazon showed us a single game and the Maps app. This isn’t to say that developers won’t add support to their apps and games, but don’t forget this is Fire OS, not Android. Fire OS apps are usually just repackaged Android apps; expecting developers to add something as significant as 3D support, without comparable 3D functionality in either Android or iOS, is a long shot. Unless the Fire Phone explodes in popularity (unlikely), the only developer that will embrace Dynamic Perspective is Amazon. It might be fun to look around the lock screen or a bottle of sriracha in 3D… but how long will that keep you hooked?
Next page: Who would actually buy the Fire Phone?
1 of 2 NextTagged In hardwaresoftwaremobile computingsmartphonesandroidiosappsamazonamazon primee-commercefire osfireflyamazon appstorefire phoneShare This Article .article {margin:0px !important;}.AR_1 {margin :0 0 20px 0 !important;}.AR_2 {margin:0 0 20px 0;} CommentPost a Comment http://www.joncole.info/ Jon Cole The one person I can think of that would buy this is my dad, who is already heavily invested in the Kindle UI and ecosystem from owning a Kindle Fire Tablet and using the Amazon App Store on his current Samsung phone. By the same token, however, the AT&T exclusivity means he’ll never buy it because he’s similarly invested in buying his cell service from Verizon.
http://www.korioi.net/ KoriosOnly Amazon fan-boys and heavily Amazon involved users would buy this phone I think. And they are not so many. Amazon will shoot itself in the foot with this phone.
SpideyBryI’m not disagreeing with your comment, but I am so tired of the use of “fan-boy”. Is it just me?
ZibidibodelIt’s not just you.
Mo LillaneyThey should have just created an app with all the killer amazon features for each platform. Integrate music, video, marketplace, firefly, and dynamic perspective all into a single, well developed app. Makes a lot more sense to me than an entire product centered around it.
Andrew FinkenbinderNobody is going to buy this thing at that price.
Ray CPersonally I have no interest in this phone, but I guess it will be great for people really into constantly buying stuff from Amazon. As far as features or gimmicks, it’s always a gimmick when it’s not your preferred platform. I really don’t care much for this phone from what I see, but I’d be willing that most people who would call any feature a gimmick, would be raving about how great it is were it on their preferred platform.
Sean O’NeillAmen to all of the comments. This could be a big bomb for Amazon. My Nexus 5 was $350, literally half the price of this phone. Does Amazon really think that this thing is going to compete with the S5, the Iphone 6, or the Nexus? They must be insane.
Sean O’NeillImagine if they tried to do this with their tablets. A 16GB Kindle HDX that is Wifi only and costs as much as a comparable Ipad Air ($500) would get absolutely destroyed in the marketplace. People buy Kindles because they are cheap hardware for the features that you get.
mori bundThis thing is (very much like the FacebookPhone) DOA.
Sean LumlyI can see this device doing very well. I don’t necessarily see this handset selling huge numbers out of the gate, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see it gain significant momentum gradually as have previous Amazon devices. I suspect that the market that they are targeting is not likely the type that comment below these types of articles, and presumably pour over spec sheets.
In this case, I think that the killer feature is simplicity. The ability to get live tech-support (mayday) and training right on your device is a very powerful idea that I’m sure will make novice users much more confident. The launcher also has the impossible-to-misuse quality of the iOS launcher. The handset should be very easy to jump in and use, with less complexity than many flavours of Android.
Where the phone falls short (IMO) is the styling. It certainly looks functional, but seems very generic and bland next to some of its flagship competition. It remains to be seen if this matters to its target market, but I would guess that it would.
Moz GrenAn excellent summary of my own feelings on this subject. It looks like I’m the target customer – middle aged and middle class -
and I might have been interested. I can’t see how this is an
improvement on my almost 4 year old Nokia N8 though – and I don’t want
Amazon in my pocket.
I can’t really argue about your points on the price, I think there are a lot of interested people who will pass because they can’t quite stomach a $700-800 price tag, even with a free 12 months of Prime thrown in. However, as fair as your points were on their ecosystem, we were all saying the same thing about Android 4 years ago…and though Amazon is not Google, it’s still Amazon. I think they have a shot at being able to build a respectable ecosystem for themselves.
PhobosGood luck to them, I think they should come up with this 2 or 3yrs ago. Kind of like MS, late to the party in smartphones and tablets.
http://www.mrseb.co.uk/ Sebastian AnthonyYep, indeed. I almost put in a Windows Phone comparison actually. It’s a pretty similar scenario. (But sadly, I think Amazon actually has a larger captive audience and might actually do better than WinPho.)
SpideyBryI’m still very happy with my Windows phone. I’m excited about the upcoming Cortana feature. From what I’ve read so far about the amazon phone I am not interested in switching to it.
DustinALedonneI’m sure there will be times when Firefly comes in handy, but I don’t know how many people out there would buy an Amazon phone specifically for it. As we covered earlier today, you are making a big concession when you opt for Amazon’s Fire OS instead of Android or iOS. Does anyone remember Google Goggles? http://sn.im/290xdj8
brekinapezNow why would anyone want to order a bag of beef jerky from Amazon? A case, maybe, but are you really going to go in the convenience store, online order the bag of jerky SITTING ON THE SHELF IN FRONT OF YOU, add in shipping and wait for the bag to arrive? Real men don’t wait for jerky.
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Fire OS vs. Android: Can Amazon’s new Fire Phone justify its ostentatious price tag?
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HomeComputingMobileInternetGamingElectronicsExtremeDealsExtremeTechMobileFire OS vs. Android: Can Amazon’s new Fire Phone justify its ostentatious price tag?Fire OS vs. Android: Can Amazon’s new Fire Phone justify its ostentatious price tag?By Ryan Whitwam on June 19, 2014 at 7:31 amCommentShare This articleEveryone has been wondering what Amazon would do when it finally got into the smartphone game, and now we can stop wondering — it’s the Fire Phone. Unimaginitive name aside, this is Amazon’s attempt to expand its custom Android build (called Fire OS) from tablets to phones, which keeps Amazon’s content and shopping experience in your pocket all day. The smartphone’s specs are high-end, but it’s the experience that matters most. The $200 on-contract price tag is a premium price point for a smartphone – does Amazon’s first foray into Android phones justify that price?
If you’ve never spent time with a Kindle Fire tablet, you might not even realize that Fire OS is a version of Android. There are still hints of the little green robot peeking through Amazon’s tough gunmetal gray Fire OS theme. However, one aspect of Android you won’t find on the Fire Phone is the part everyone associates with Android — there are no Google apps or services. Amazon is forking Android for each of its devices, usually grabbing one of the newer versions of Google’s software from the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) when the time comes to develop. The open source build of Android comes with none of Google’s framework built-in because those parts are proprietary. That’s fine, and maybe even preferable for Amazon’s purposes.
When you buy a Fire Phone, you get Amazon’s services in place of Google’s. That means no Chrome, Play Store, Google Play Music, Google Drive, or Gmail. Instead you get Silk Browser, Amazon Appstore, Cloud Player, Cloud Drive, and Amazon’s generic email client. Depending on how deeply embedded you are in Google’s ecosystem, that might not be the end of the world.
Since Amazon is using Android as the base of its platform, the apps in the Appstore are just Android apps with a few small tweaks for Amazon’s distribution system and DRM. However, just because developers can put their apps on Amazon doesn’t mean they will. That might be the biggest issue with the Fire Phone as a premium device — the Amazon Appstore can’t hold a candle to Google Play. The Appstore only has fifteen of the top twenty free Android apps and games, and just nine of twenty top paid apps and games.
Amazon is doing much better when it comes to other types of content. Fire OS has built-in support for Amazon’s video library, which you still can’t get on regular Android devices. There is also a vast selection of music with cloud storage. However, Google now has an excellent subscription music service in Play Music. If you want to read on a smartphone, which isn’t really ideal, the Kindle ecosystem built into the Fire Phone is far superior to Google Play Books.
Amazon spent a large part of its event talking about how its massive selection of products would tie into the Fire Phone via Amazon Firefly. This is a software feature that uses the camera to instantly ID products and link you to them on Amazon. It can also figure out music and video content for you. It’s undeniably neat, but you have to wonder how much use it will get. Similar apps and services already exist for Android, though in a more limited fashion. Will Firefly be a killer feature or just a gimmick? Time will tell.
Amazon is trying to get away from selling devices so cheaply that it eats all the profit, as it does with the Fire tablets. The Fire Phone is being sold in a very traditional way on AT&T with a two-year contract (it’s $650-750 without one). The retailer is probably making money on every device instead of just hoping it hooks more consumers of its content with a cheap device. The free year of Amazon Prime does sweeten the deal, but more capable devices like the Galaxy S5 and LG G3 are selling for the same up-front price. Amazon might be paddling upstream here.
Tagged In softwaremobile computingsmartphonesandroidgoogleappsamazonopen source3Dfire osfire phoneShare This Article .article {margin:0px !important;}.AR_1 {margin :0 0 20px 0 !important;}.AR_2 {margin:0 0 20px 0;} CommentPost a Comment http://www.andyosier.com/ Andy Osier“The smartphone’s specs are high-end, but …”
You meant to say “aren’t high-end,” right?
SuperTechAccording to CNET, (which compares the specs side by side with the iphone and S5), the specs are right in line with that kind of smart phone. http://www.cnet.com/news/amazon-fire-phone-compare-apple-iphone-5s-samsung-galaxy-s5/
Of course, I guess they could be wrong.
http://www.andyosier.com/ Andy OsierI guess the 720p screen is what makes it seem subpar to me.
SuperTechI’m actually in the market for a smart phone. I’ve had the same old flip phone for over 10 years now. I don’t even think it texts. Now I have been for 6 months but have been waiting for something to ‘blow me away’ with something amazing. The HTC One M8 in champagn gold was the first one to make me sit up and take notice, but just shy of ‘must have’. I use Amazon services a lot, and I shop with Amazon quite a bit, so I would really like to see this phone up in close and in person.
ShanieOneillnucmy classmate’s aunt makes $68 every hour on the computer . She has been
fired for 7 months but last month her paycheck was $15495 just working on the
computer for a few hours. visit the site Rex10.COM
just before I looked at the receipt ov $8130 , I didn’t believe that my
sister woz like actualy bringing in money part-time from there pretty old
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I really don’t shop Amazon as much as I used to, so this is of no value to me. Now I guess this could also be Apple and Google fans distorting to way the device can be used. But from what I can tell this phone is mainly beneficial to people who will be using Amazon services a lot.
Mo LillaneyI think its more important for amazon to roll out amazon fresh then it is to have a smartphone imo.
Michael ClappI was hoping Amazon would do something disruptive to the big carriers but instead this is really just a me too paired with AT&T. The features aren’t unique enough to make me want on and in fact are too unique in the wrong way without having the Google apps. This one is going to whiff IMO.
brekinapezDue to Amazon’s treatment of book publishers and authors, I will not purchase any of their products.
Fortunately there is no shortage of options.
AntonHi brekinapez – I thought Amazon were a reputable company? I’m interested to know how publishers and authors were are being maltreated. Can you shed some light please?
brekinapezAmazon has a huge share of the retail book market – they pretty much dominate it now. They have lately been using this fact to try and force extremely favorable contracts for buying titles from the various publishers. The rates are along the lines of those Wal-Mart demands of many of its vendors and some smaller companies have been wrecked by this. Those who don’t play along find their authors get removed from discount programs all other books usually get which makes them less attractive to buyers, they stop featuring them on recommended lists, and other tactics mainly directed at affecting the publisher’s bottom line. It is a dilemma for them as Amazon is in control of much of their revenue stream now. In fact, I used to work at Borders Books and we gave them control of our web site when corporate decided to farm out the online sector (which was really stupid, IMO) and eventually Amazon got big enough to tell us to get another online sales outlet, which by that time we were too late to re-enter the game and we know where Borders is now.
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Amazon’s Fire Phone Uses Depth And 3D Effects To Stand Out
We’ve been hearing about head-tracking technology on phones for a long time now. Some have ventured into this territory already, with Samsung releasing camera-based head tracking in earlier generations of the Galaxy S phones.
Today, Amazon is trying out its own version of the gimmick with new 3D effects enabled by four cameras on the front of the phone. (We totally called this, btw.)
Bezos explained that, back in the 14th century, perspective changed the way we look at and create art. “There’s always more to see,” he said. “So what if there were a thousand artists standing by to redraw the picture every time you moved your head?”
The 3D effects features will be present throughout the phone to not only offer a more life-like experience in various apps, but also to provide the opportunity for tilt-based gestures.
It works by having four 120-degree, front-facing cameras on the phone, in each corner. At any moment, two of them are working to constantly know where you head is at any given time.
Even if you’re using the phone at night, each camera has it’s own infrared light to shine on you so the phone knows what’s going on. Amazon is calling the tracking feature “dynamic perspective.”
Amazon spent a lot of time developing this system so that the phone can always tell the difference between a picture of your face and your actual head.
Paired with Dyanamic Perspective, Amazon has also introduced 60fps 3D effects, and they aren’t just for certain applications. Amazon is currently using them to provide interesting 3D lock screens, and the effects are littered throughout the UI. For example, icons in the user interface float above other layers of the screen to provide a parallax-like effect.
Pairing these effects with tilt controls will let users switch between web pages and perform other commands, too, by simply tilting purposefully to the left or right. As we’ve seen with other phones, you can tilt to scroll through an article or web page vertically, as well.
We previously reported that Amazon is using Omron’s face-sensing technology.
A Dynamic Perspective SDK is available now to developers.
We haven’t actually tested any of it out ourselves, obviously, but the folks in the audience at the event are certainly impressed.
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Amazon’s Fire Phone Introduces Firefly, A Feature That Lets You Identify (And Buy!) Things You See In The Real World
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With the debut of the Amazon Fire Phone this afternoon, the company introduced a new feature called Firefly, which is largely designed to let you identify — and then, of course, buy — things you see out in the real world. Firefly takes advantage of the smartphone’s camera to let you identify things like phone numbers, movies, books, games, CDs, food and more just by pointing your camera at them.
The feature is a key part of the new phone, in fact, as it even has a dedicated button on the side – a perfect example of how much this new hardware is about bringing customers into Amazon’s ecosystem and turning them into regular online shoppers.
A Firefly button is sort of like “instant gratification” built into your device.
During the demonstration on stage, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos showed off how Firefly can be used to scan barcodes on items, a book cover, a CD and more. There’s a Shazam-like audio recognition-component, as well. Firefly can identify songs you’re listening to, and it can even listen to a show, and then let you access that specific scene on Amazon, which is a clever trick. Naturally, you’re directed to buy the tracks and shows and movies on Amazon.
To some extent, Firefly looks like a feature built on top of Flow, Amazon’s visual-recognition technology that used to reside in its own standalone mobile app before more recently being introduced into the main Amazon native application.
Flow, which was run by Amazon subsidiary A9 (the search and advertising wing of Amazon), was first launched over two years ago. That app, and now Amazon.com’s flagship app, work by identifying media package covers, logos, artwork and other unique visual features.
So by Amazon’s description of Firefly, it’s clearly an extension of Flow, though that was not said outright. (It’s unclear why the company decided to rename it. But “Firefly” does sound cooler.)
Firefly can also recognize art, and then pull up the associated Wikpedia entry, which is something Apple’s Siri and Google Now can’t yet do.
At launch, Firefly is capable of recognizing over 100 million items, said Bezos. That includes 245,000 movies and TV episodes, 160 live TV channels, 35 million songs and 70 million products.
It’s worth noting the Firefly feature isn’t only about finding things you can buy, although clearly that’s its larger goal.
Under the hood, the technology being used includes “semantic boosting,” Bezos continued, which is a fancy way of saying it can smartly identify and understand text based on the context. It can identify phone numbers using image-to-text conversion and can determine if a phone number doesn’t exist. This feature was demonstrated by pointing the phone at a sign for a pie shop, which then allowed you to kick off a phone call to that store.
The feature works for signs, posters, magazines or business cards, and it lets you send emails, save as a contact, or go to a website without typing a URL.
In addition, developers will be able to tap into Firefly, which makes the feature even more promising.
An SDK will allow third-parties access to all the functionality in Firefly itself. One company, the health-focused MyFitnessPal, has already taken advantage of the feature to create an app that can determine the nutritional information from the food your camera sees. Today, users have to manually enter this data or select a food from a set of search results. Firefly makes MyFitnessPal’s food diary “point and shoot.”
Included in the SDK are text, audio and image recognizers, content databases and support for custom actions allowing developers to bend Firefly to their own personal needs.
In another example, Vivino is releasing an app that gives you information about the bottles of wine you scan. Other early adopters include iHeartRadio and StubHub.
While Flow functionality may have seemed gimmicky at times — after all, it’s not that hard to enter a search query — opening up Flow (via Firefly) to a wider audience of developers has effectively just created a new app category, and something that — for now at least — is exclusive to Amazon’s platform.
While Google has also experimented with visual recognition technology in the past (remember “Google Goggles?“), it hasn’t really been a huge focus for the company. Meanwhile, it makes sense for Amazon to pursue this feature, as the company sees identification as the first step in the purchasing process, not just another cool trick you can do with your phone.
The Firefly SDK is being launched today, said Bezos.
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The Best Amazon Fire Phone Features You Won’t Get In Any Other Phone
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Turning greenhouse gases into mobile phone cases
US telecommunications firm Sprint has just announced that it will launch an iPhone 5 and iPhone 5s case using a new eco-plastic. Photograph: Justin Sullivan/Getty ImagesForget old-style alchemy. A California-based tech company has come up with something far cooler than just turning dull metal into shiny metal. Using a proprietary 'biocatalyst' machine, Newlight Technologies has devised a way of taking greenhouse gas from the atmosphere and turning it into plastic pellets.
The AirCarbon technology promises not only to reduce the use of petroleum in plastic manufacturing, but to reduce greenhouse gases in the atmosphere at the same time. The net result could be a "whole new paradigm for how plastics impact the world", says Mark Herrema, Newlight's co-founder and chief executive.
"We harness carbon from greenhouse gas and use it as a resource to make materials that are as strong as oil-based plastics but less expensive", he adds.
So will it take off? The early signs are certainly promising. US telecommunications firm Sprint has just announced that it will launch an iPhone 5 and iPhone 5s case based on the revolutionary thermoplastic. The case, which is certified by the independent environmental auditor Trucost as "carbon-negative" (meaning it stores more carbon than it emits), will initially sell in limited volumes online.
"Phone cases are a significant use of plastics for us [and] a very easy market for us to get into", says Amy Hargroves, Sprint's director of corporate responsibility and sustainability. "The point really isn't just about the sales of an AirCarbon case, but it's getting it to scale as an acceptable material in our broader portfolio and that of other companies."
To that end, news from Dell will help. The US computer manufacturer recently reported its intention to release packaging sleeves made from the eco plastic for its Latitude series notebooks. If successful, Dells says it will move more of its packaging and products over to AirCarbon in the future.
Newlight is currently in discussions with a number of other manufacturers to develop a range of other applications based on the technology, from automotive and beverage solutions through to apparel and packaging.
"The AirCarbon production technology was scaled to small commercial scale in August 2013, so our mission now is to ramp up capacity to global scale. Our next major target is 50m pounds per year capacity", says Herrema, who founded Newlight back in 2003.
The technology works by initially isolating carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from industrial sources, such digesters and methane capture technologies on dairy farms. The carbon-heavy air is then pumped into a biocatalyst that isolates the carbon, before reassembling it in a polymerising process into a long-chain thermopolymer.
Newlight insists that the technology outcompetes conventional oil-based plastic on price and its overall environmental footprint. It also operates recycling facilities to re-process AirCarbon products, edging it towards the holy grail of "cradle-to-cradle" manufacturing. Plastic manufacturing currently accounts for 4% of global oil consumption, according to the British Plastics Federation.
Sprint's Hargroves concedes that integrating any new innovation into the plastics supply chain carries risks and that manufacturers are often cautious breed about adopting new technologies. That said, she predicts a "pretty broad acceptance" of the disruptive technology within a decade.
"The question is 'why wouldn't you do it?'" she says. "If you can get to the point where it is less expensive that other options, it has environmental benefits and it has the same quality, it should become the obvious choice."
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