Of all the major smartphone companies, none seem to be as serious as Amazon is with launching a smartphone with a 3D display. The e-commerce giants have been rumoured to be working on a 3D display smartphone for some time now, and it appears the company is ready to unveil it on June 18. They’ve even got a teaser video for it, embedded above.
The first murmurs that Amazon was working on a smartphone came two months ago. At the time, it didn’t come as much of a surprise; after all, Amazon does sell its own Kindle tablets that comes with its own Android app store. But interest in the phone escalated shortly after, when a new rumour about the phone indicated that it will sport six camera sensors: two standard ones for photo-taking activities, and another four to power a 3D display on the device.
The rumours went on to make things even more intriguing. The Amazon smartphone will apparently have a very different user interface; on top of the usual buttons, the UI utilizes tilts in different directions to display additional information on the screen without the user having to touch or tap anything. We’ve already seen how even a gesture-based UI can be a difficult thing for the masses to adopt, so it will be interesting how Amazon tackles public perception on this. In the teaser above, though at no point can we see the device, those in the video can be seen tilting…something in their hands, as well as moving their heads from side to side.
Amazon is clearly pumped up about this device. So much so that it is ready to invite not just the media, but also developers and members of the public for the launch event with Amazon founder Jeff Bezos on June 18 – though the invite only extends to those in the US, unsurprisingly. It’s also telling that in the invite for developers, Amazon specifically asks if they have “an innovative way in which you have used gyroscopes, accelerometers, or other device sensors in your app development”, or if they’re interested in developing apps utilizing a new type of sensor.
Will we be seeing something extraordinary come June 18?
(Source: The Verge)
