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Amazon Launch Event

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86 pointsp-pat-ni62 comments

I'm going to get downvoted for this, but this video is hilarious when you imagine they're trying out some sort of sex toy attachment. Just watch it again with that in mind.

That works too well. I found the comment "that's pretty damn intuitive" the most funny with the image of it being a sex toy in mind.

"I would use that alot" Caused me to actually crack up.

I think this might be the first time I ever LOL'ed from something I've read on HN. Good call.

I kind of suspect Amazon knew this when they were making it.

Remember their free-publicity drones segment on 60 minutes that made Amazon Prime go apeshit right before Black Friday? They've got a very clever marketing department.

Furthermore, this is exactly the kind of thing that would

(a) Drive traffic that otherwise wouldn't care to a promo for a video about another goddamn smartphone

(b) Convince whoever watches it, even if purely for entertainment value, that this is a totally different phone and worth paying attention to (like the opposite of when I keep ignoring Samsung or whoever's "THE NEXT BIG THING" every two months...yeah, whatever, the screen is a different size or something)

If they just announced "we're making a smartphone guys - here's a video!" it wouldn't be nearly as huge. I wouldn't be surprised if this gets on the front page of reddit purely because it's hilarious when you misinterpret it.

Hell, worked on me.

All the head moving made me think back to Jonny Lee's wiimote headtracking 3d display.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd3-eiid-Uw

Perhaps Amazon have an eye tracking system which can do the same with out the need for the user to be wearing infra red leds?

Yeah I was coming here to say the same thing. Seems like it is definitely doing some sort of motion tracking.

I'm actually thinking this is either "Kinect" on a tablet and/or eye tracking. The application specifically talks about additional sensors. being used to build apps. I'm not sure head tracking is a strong use case for additional apps. But something with the depth of MS's Kinect or eye tracking could be really interesting.

I've never seen that video before, so thanks for posting it.

Yes, the head movement in the Amazon video makes it look like head tracking/perspective changes built in to the device. But what for?

They will be launching their smartphone. Source: http://bgr.com/2014/04/15/amazon-smartphone-photos-specs-kin...

That would match from the way you can see people in the video holding their hands.

"he device houses an additional four front-facing cameras that work with other sensors to facilitate the software’s 3D effects."

I wonder how the battery life of this will be like.

I was thinking that 4 cameras seems a little excessive when you only really need one for head tracking. But maybe it has 4 and uses one at a time - switching between them when/if one is covered.

Well, you need only need 1 camera for lateral tracking, but I believe you need at least 2 cameras for depth tracking. Possibly a third for eye tracking and a fourth for Skype.

The questions here in the form certainly give some hints about what it's about:

"Are you interested in developing apps utilizing a new type of sensor?"

"Describe an innovative way in which you have used gyroscopes, accelerometers, or other device sensors in your app development."

The clue is in the title: it is the drone!

Those people are just watching some wild footage of it on some tablet, the teaser is there to just throw people off the scent, gyroscopes etc: must be the drone.

Should I place a bet on that or would I be best to go with the 3d eye-tracking kindle-phone?

You do know that most (maybe all) modern smartphones and tablets have accelerometers in them, which are often gyroscope based, right?

Further, the mass production of such parts due to their inclusion in phones is essentially the reason why inexpensive drones are viable today.

Chris Anderson famously called it the peace dividend of the smartphone wars.

Humour bypass!

Whilst everyone else is 'how high?' jumping to the latest Amazon hype event as if it really mattered, I regurgitate their last 'hype event' and get a wave of downvotes with people thinking I must be that retarded to think it really is the drone.

Do you have things like comedy in America or is everything that bad it has to be serious about everything nowadays?

Talk of amazon phone with multiple cameras:

http://www.cnet.com/news/rumored-amazon-phone-six-cameras-su...

and: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6485698

Going back more than a year: http://www.cnet.com/news/amazon-said-to-be-developing-3d-sma...

From the head moving and what they're saying about it, it's definitely this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2K39Q9zvQoE

Yes, I would definitely use this often.

Is there anything discernible in the reflection on the hipster-glasses at 0:42?

... enhance ...

http://i.imgur.com/oe2f1pP.png

Tough to see much, but you do see a shadow of her hand and the proportions indicate to me a tablet-sized device not a phone.

We still can't rule out a phone, though. For this type of video they don't necessarily use the real device. Another possibility (as suggested by the questions in the form) is that it's a sensor applicable to many types of devices.

Looks like they're moving around a 3D cube on a tablet screen.

It's definitely a phone in the video: http://i.imgur.com/MgBcxMw.png

You can see its top at the bottom of the photo.

Classic geek moment. Enhance the reflection! ...When all you have to do is look down and see the whole damn thing.

Yep, it's definitely a phone sized device, and you can see her scrolling with her finger in the reflection, so it's a touch screen. Now, what's actually unique about it that separates it from the millions of similar devices, I guess we'll have to wait and see. Perhaps the display stays square to your head? I mean, if you're viewing the screen at a slight angle, it skews the perspective to look straight?

http://i.imgur.com/ExL1OqV.png

There's a quick photoshop of a phone at an angle and the display square. Now, you wouldn't purposely use the phone at such an extreme angle, but when you're typing, playing games, in bed, etc, it might make things easier to use. Fairly straightforward, it would just be tracking the location of your head, and adjust the perspective of the display.

clever idea, but that just seems like a really small, inconsequential feature to play up that much...

¿Porque no los dos?

How about just "the glasses"?

Everyone is tilting their head or the device. Definitely something related to a 3D interface, but it has to be something more that just a 3D interface.

I am specially intrigued by "Do you have machine learning experience?" question in the developer section for the invitation request.

At this rate, one day I'm going to buy a house on Amazon.

Link to video: https://d3d73dg4t65dlz.cloudfront.net/videos/customer_tease_... (it was in the source-code)

Split discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7847951

It's a phone. You can see the top of the device in their promo video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erUZQ9GK0sE&t=41.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BpVCE7aCMAA_DDJ.png:large has a tweaked screen capture.

It's rumoured to be a phone with a 3D display - but I don't see why I would want that. It's certainly a cool USP but it seems like gimmick that will quickly lose attention. Maybe they've found a use for it I haven't thought of but I don't know anyone who has been requesting a 3D display on their phone.

> I don't know anyone who has been requesting a 3D display on their phone.

Well, 7 years ago I didn't know anyone who was asking to eliminate physical keyboards from phones.

I'm less skeptical of the merit of the idea (whatever exactly it turns out to be), than I am of Amazon's first generation implementation (based on owning 1st gen versions of Kindle eReader and Kindle Fire).

The thing is 3d screens have been a tested quantity (both on things like the 3DS and on a lot of phones in Japan). It's been far from a hit.

So does the phones without physical keyboards, using touch pens, until Apple figured out how to eliminate that damn pen and just use fingers and here we are today. I give it a benefit of doubt - I doubt that what has been done to 3d displays is all what can be done ;)

I wouldn't mind it, assuming that this would have no effect on the already bad battery life of those.

The illusion that the display is a window into another parallel 3D world might prove very useful once developers & users know how to exploit it.

Tilting the phone to see 'under' the current foreground might be a way to show next-messages, pending-notifications, etc.

Add a backside display, and perhaps you'd flip the phone for 'details' - and the eye-tracking ensures that usually, only one side is powered at a time.

Or what if each side of a telepresence-connection is being live-mapped with technology like:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ghgbycqb92c

Then, even without a head-worn VR display, your handheld phone/tablet can serve as a roaming-camera into the remote space.

Pause at just past 0:41. Woman is wearing a blue top. You can see a very-much phone like device, with a headphone jack.

Also at 0:04, the guy in glasses. It seems to be quite thick for a phone though.

Indeed. Here's a screengrab:

http://i.imgur.com/b1edNBJ.png

She's clearly using something that looks like a phone.

Paraphrasing a friend from Amazon:

"Man, we have no clue what they're going to announce. Whatever it is has been completely black-boxed. I'm guessing it might be a 3D projecting phone, but that's based on exactly nothing. Plus, I'm not invited, so... hah."

If there's anything i've learned through the years, if something is actually industry breaking revolutionary... they have no need to hype the launch. It'll get the press after the event.

I'm reminded of the time Opera "Changed the internet"

Summoning user?id=nilium

Please make your wallpaper [1] work for this phone.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7843664

3D effects are neat, but I'm betting Amazon is more excited to get a high fidelity eyetracker in your phone.

Instant heatmaps, new types of ad creatives, new ad conversion modes, ...

Judging by all of the head tilting in the video, perhaps something with 3D or "holographic" projection?

That would be consistent with previous reports of 3D "sensing" tech on the phone (not sure whether that means gestures, glasses-free 3D screen, or something else).

Sources: http://bgr.com/2014/04/22/amazon-smartphone-specs-details-ki... http://bgr.com/2014/05/01/amazon-smartphone-photos-kindle-ph...

Prediction: launching a Kindle Phone for a $30/m phone plan, free data for Kindle/Amazon streaming.

Hmm methinks you did not watch the video...

What video is everyone talking about?

There is a video under "June 18 | Seattle" on the linked page

Weird. I don't see it. Could be Ghostery or some similar ad blocking plugin I guess.

Yeah I have "click to play plugins" enabled on chrome and didn't see it until I saw these comments, and manually enabled plugins.

You don't need any add-ons to selectively block flash nowadays on Firefox... Menu - Add-ons - Plugins - Flash "Ask to activate" instead of "Always activate"

Looks like it will be a lot like this: http://www.getmoju.com/

I hope not - an application that does something that looks almost like video already available to any modern phone and requires motion to be displayed? Hardly worth the launch event, hype, marketing money&effort and doesnt seem any way revolutionary or cool to me. But of course, I might be absolutely wrong about it and that's cool too.

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