For years rumors popped up regularly, hinting that Amazon planned to make its own smartphone. Year after year, Amazon has disappointed us. But this year, a well-known and very reliable publication leaked photos of what it claims to be a 3D smartphone from Amazon. Now, the same publication says it knows the intimate details about how the Amazon smartphone will be controlled and it isn't with buttons.
No, the Amazon smartphone with all its cool 3D sensors, will be controlled using gestures such as tilting, flipping and maybe even shaking.
BGR, the publication that leaked the first images of the Amazon smartphone, claims that it knows how Amazon's 3D smartphone works, as well as what kind of hardware it's got under the hood. The 3D Amazon smartphone will reportedly feature a 720p 4.7-inch display, 2GB of RAM, a Qualcomm Snapdragon processor and a total of six cameras, several of which will be used to track gestures and create the 3D effect on the display.
Four of the front-facing cameras and sensors will be used to analyze the user's movements and gestures. The innovative software of the Amazon smartphone will then link this motion data to actions on the smartphone, while simultaneously creating a 3D effect. The cameras will have low-energy infrared sensors, so that the smartphone's battery lasts longer.
The idea behind Amazon's gesture-controlled smartphone is that using gestures instead of taps, swipes and buttons will make it easier to navigate the smartphone one-handed. For example, by tilting the Amazon smartphone at different angles, the user will see different apps, notifications and menus. BGR says that menus will be accessed by tilting the smartphone to the left or right, depending on which menu you want to bring up. As a result, the Amazon smartphone won't have a standard menu button.
Users will also be able to switch between compatible apps with a simple tilt in the right direction. For example, if you are writing a text message to a friend and you want to include a picture, you just tilt the Amazon smartphone to the side to bring up the photo roll or camera app. From there, you can easily send a photo from the message app without going back and forth between apps or tapping all over the display to find what you're looking for. Users will also be able to scroll down a web page or flip through a book without having to touch the display. Once again, a specific tilt is all that is needed.
Obviously, all this tilting and gesturing will take some getting used to, but it probably isn't as complicated as it sounds. Sometimes the most intuitive motions are all but impossible to describe with written words. Several sources say that the Amazon smartphone will arrive this summer, so hopefully we'll be able to see these gestures in practice soon.
