Amazon has a new smartphone under development, according to a Reuters report. Citing “four people familiar with the matter,” the report says the new handset is internally known as “Transformer.” The report claims the retail giant wants to offer a “mobile personalization device” that will sync with Amazon’s smart assistant Alexa and “serve as a conduit to Amazon customers throughout the day.”
The new device will be designed to make it easier to interact with various Amazon services, including making purchases from Amazon, viewing content on Prime Video, or listening to Prime Music. While AI will be a major feature of the device, Alexa may not be the “primary operating system” of the phone.
Amazon founder founder Jeff Bezos and the new initiative is just the latest episode in a years-long effort by Bezos to offer a smartphone with shopping at its core, offering shipping convenience and discounts through the Prime membership, as well as features to challenge Apple.
If all of this sounds familiar, #YoureAsOldAsIAm and may remember the Amazon Fire Phone, which debuted back in 2014, only to be pulled from shelves approximately a year later.
The Amazon Fire Phone boasted a quad-core 2.2GHz processor, Adreno 330 graphics, and 2GB of RAM, as well as a 13MP camera on the back, with an five-element wide aperture f/2.0 lens and built-in optical image stabilization. The display was a 4.7-inch IPS LCD HD panel. The handset also had dual stereo speakers with support for virtual Dolby Digital Plus surround sound. A pair of earbuds with tangle-free flat cables were included.
The Fire Phone also included the ability to display 3D images using a complicated multi-camera screen. Unfortunately, the feature used so much power that battery life was disappointing and the handset often overheated. The device ran Amazon’s proprietary Fire OS, meaning users lacked access to popular apps available on the Android and iOS platforms.
Even with Amazon packaging the Fire Phone with a free year of Amazon Prime, the device sold poorly. Amazon decision to quickly cut the price of the handset from $649 unlocked to $159 didn’t help, and the company cut its losses by canceling the phone after 14 months, taking a $170 million charge for unsold inventory.
Reuters says development of the new Amazon phone is still in its early stages, and the project may not come to fruition. Stay tuned.
