If Apple invented sliced bread, this would be Amazon's sliced bread with butter baked in. No, make that fancy butter. As far as smartphone functionality goes, the 3D face tracking--the way it's used here--is less useful than the Firefly and sign recognition. Machine vision is more practical.
Funny thing is: I never actually dismissed the Fire phone (@tt92618 overreacted). I pretty much had the same reaction as you. 3D is a novelty, and when the newness wears off, it won't be the thing that keeps sales going. To me, it's clear this phone is really a strategy to grow Amazon's digital goods business (music, movies, books, TV shows). If Apple is about user experience, Google is about open and free, then Amazon is about funneling sales of their online business. The 3D feature is just a headliner--something people will remember then they think of this phone. Apple tries to do the same with each iPhone release, such as Facetime, Siri or the first 64-bit mobile CPU.
Nah. Sliced bread with fancy butter baked in is an improvement. This thing is not only worse than an iPhone, but it isn't even as good as the best Android phones. Firefly ... who buys a smartphone to shop on Amazon? The OS is equivalent to Android Jellybean, two very good Android updates ago with the third coming out in weeks, the thing is bulky and heavy, yet it has the smallest screen of the expensive Android phones.
Google isn't about "open and free." It is about getting as many handsets to people as possible to make money on big data. Making Android free was the only way to make it viable, and most of the best features in Android (and many of the fixes for its problems) came from the Android manufacturers and the open source community because Google did not have the technical expertise or organizational discipline to develop the OS themselves. So the idea that they are being altruistic or contributing to this new revolutionary tech culture is a scam. It was just their way of releasing a half-baked, copycat ripoff product into the world, see a ton of OEMs lose billions due to their bad software with no consequences to them or accountability, and get everybody else to do their work for them for free without getting called on it.
And their business sense is totally bogus. Android is PERFECT for a set top streaming box. They could have come out with their own version of Fire TV years ago. What do they do instead? Chromecast. Android is actually quite good for low end laptops/netbooks. What do they do instead? ChromeOS. HP is making Android laptops that people are using instead of Windows 8 because their customers kept asking for it, not because of any Google marketing strategy. There are some pretty good Android-based products out there, but it is despite Google, not because of them.
Comments
If Apple invented sliced bread, this would be Amazon's sliced bread with butter baked in. No, make that fancy butter. As far as smartphone functionality goes, the 3D face tracking--the way it's used here--is less useful than the Firefly and sign recognition. Machine vision is more practical.
Funny thing is: I never actually dismissed the Fire phone (@tt92618 overreacted). I pretty much had the same reaction as you. 3D is a novelty, and when the newness wears off, it won't be the thing that keeps sales going. To me, it's clear this phone is really a strategy to grow Amazon's digital goods business (music, movies, books, TV shows). If Apple is about user experience, Google is about open and free, then Amazon is about funneling sales of their online business. The 3D feature is just a headliner--something people will remember then they think of this phone. Apple tries to do the same with each iPhone release, such as Facetime, Siri or the first 64-bit mobile CPU.
Nah. Sliced bread with fancy butter baked in is an improvement. This thing is not only worse than an iPhone, but it isn't even as good as the best Android phones. Firefly ... who buys a smartphone to shop on Amazon? The OS is equivalent to Android Jellybean, two very good Android updates ago with the third coming out in weeks, the thing is bulky and heavy, yet it has the smallest screen of the expensive Android phones.
Google isn't about "open and free." It is about getting as many handsets to people as possible to make money on big data. Making Android free was the only way to make it viable, and most of the best features in Android (and many of the fixes for its problems) came from the Android manufacturers and the open source community because Google did not have the technical expertise or organizational discipline to develop the OS themselves. So the idea that they are being altruistic or contributing to this new revolutionary tech culture is a scam. It was just their way of releasing a half-baked, copycat ripoff product into the world, see a ton of OEMs lose billions due to their bad software with no consequences to them or accountability, and get everybody else to do their work for them for free without getting called on it.
And their business sense is totally bogus. Android is PERFECT for a set top streaming box. They could have come out with their own version of Fire TV years ago. What do they do instead? Chromecast. Android is actually quite good for low end laptops/netbooks. What do they do instead? ChromeOS. HP is making Android laptops that people are using instead of Windows 8 because their customers kept asking for it, not because of any Google marketing strategy. There are some pretty good Android-based products out there, but it is despite Google, not because of them.
I've been scanning and calling phone numbers on my iPhone since 2011 with ReadAndCall. That part doesn't seem new.
Looks interesting, and certainly novel, but not something I would be interested in buying.