Live From Amazon’s Phone Event | Hacker News Reader

Live From Amazon’s Phone Event

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68 pointsaashaykumar9284 comments

As a computer vision researcher, I am impressed that Amazon has made the most computer-vision-centric mobile device seen to date. I have no idea if it will catch on, but having a dedicated physical button for object recognition is huge insofar as it means they actually intend for people to be using this all the time, so they'll only be devoting more and more energy to recognizing everything in the world. Sure, it's mostly so you can then buy those things from Amazon, but I have to think there will be other useful applications given the provided recognition SDK.

I'm also curious if developers will have direct access to the four corner cameras on the front, and if the head-tracking it uses for 3D visual effects includes detailed eye/pupil-tracking -- if it doesn't yet, you can be sure that's planned for the future.

Edit: So the dedicated recognition button will already pull up wikipedia entries for recognized works of art. I wonder if they'll ever let third party developers hook into the hardware button so that third party plant-recognition, insect-recognition, action-figure recognition (etc) app results can be called up with that single button push in case Amazon doesn't recognize a purchasable item.

6 cameras total. Sounding like a razor...

Although it seems like the only reason for four on the front is so that you can block two with your hand and still have two left for distance finding.

Correct. The four front-facing cameras are low res, b&w, low framerate.

ETA: I worked on this feature for lab126.

Any chance apps can use raw imagery from those cameras? can imagine some pretty nifty uses (say, true live 3d videophone: use cameras to construct 3d model from low res data, then map color image onto model, just have to transmit already-sent video feed plus modest model data).

The API is open as of today, and I suspect you only get information on the events (looked [direction]; peeked [direction]), not raw data.

Interesting! B&W makes total sense. Low res also makes sense for head tracking but I guess that means pupil tracking is out of the question. Regarding low framerate, like lower than 30 fps? I would have thought continuous perspective shifting would require a framerate at or better than screen refresh rate to appear normal to the user.

You can't see pupils really. Watch the videos they showed behind Bezos and they show the test apps with raw video.

This phone is exclusive to AT&T. Not sure why this late in the game they would want to sell only through one carrier and that too AT&T!

They probably get ads and displays in the retail stores. I think it'd be hard to launch a new phone brand without a retail presences even for Amazon.

I thought this was a good point until I realized the traffic Amazon has to it's home page and how many of it's devices are Top 5 sellers in major categories. Still, you could be right that they wanted even more than just Amazon alone could do for the phone.

Google has a pretty popular homepage too, but I bet having the phones available in stores led to more sales.

(Well, OK, and they were also really cheap or sometimes free with a new plan.)

They shouldn't cooperate with the carriers at all and fire some legal shots at the subsidy contracts. WP7,7.1,8 showed why cooperation is bad idea.

Bezos just don't have the money to compete with the big boys and should be looking at breaking the current model.

As a first time phone maker it was probably easiest to work closely with one carrier so that the design team could work closely with a single certification team. I know lots of companies make phones now, but it is still a big engineering problem.

That's the point where I put my wallet back up.

I am looking at this from a media consumption perspective. While Apple, Google, and Microsoft (and OEMS) try to out do each other in the spec race. Amazon has always catered to users consumer habits. From their early beginning selling books to their entrance (dominance) with digital books, Amazon has always focused on facilitating content/media/physical goods consumption. The Kindle Fire tablets have led up to this phone. This phone will succeed in facilitating users to purchase from Amazon and Amazon alone.

How is this any different than what, say, Apple does? Even Google is onboard the closed "experience" these days.

Apple is not facilitating the "purchase" of goods either digital or physical with one button on the iPhone. Bezos did outline the phone's specs, but the goal was to show the audience how the phone can "see" the world around itself. The phone is the first consumer product to be aware of its surroundings. It uses the data to ease purchases for the user. MY Nexus 5 makes search easy with google now, voice commands, and chrome. But this phone will make buying easy, in theory. Like I mentioned above, I am not looking at this from the perspective of the smartphone market. As in will it do well or will tech bloggers like it. But, as in will the end user find it easier to purchase goods using the physical world as intent triggers.

The iPhone is very cleverly designed to facilitate purchases in the iTunes and iOS App stores. You need to register the device with an account and credit card just to use it. If that's not a seamless consumer experience, I don't know what is.

This phone allows you to point your device to basically anything "media" and buy it. Pointing the phone at the television, identifying the actor on TV and buying some movie is a very powerful feature for people interested in consuming media...

Because I don't buy socks from Apple.

Google is really in the same business of obtaining captive users to sell and sell to. The Nexus devices are priced cheaper than pretty much any other OEM can compete with. I really hated it when the Android Market was renamed Google Play and now shows me a ton of movies and books and magazines and stuff I don't want. I use Amazon Kindle for that and only want apps, so Google is sort of abusing their position to market higher profit goods to me I'm not interested in. Hopefully amazon is a bit more tasteful in their approach.

The addition of music streaming to Amazon Prime certainly makes a lot more sense now. I have a Nexus 5 that I keep meaning to upload my music to, but I usually end up listening to an instant mix of Google Play freebies.

It takes all of 30 seconds to install the Google Play Music Manager, which will eventually upload all of your music.

Which can then be accessible from your Play Listen app.

Spotify works well if you set your most listened to stuff to be available offline.

Surprisingly high price, even on contract! I was thinking they would pull another Prime tie-in (say $49 as long as you are on prime and do not cancel).

Also in this day and age, being AT&T exclusive is a real puzzler. What does Amazon hope to gain by this?

Jeff is usually lauded for his OOTB thinking but here we see all the hall marks of following the very beaten path...

Edit: And there it is! Includes a year of prime with the price of the phone (as revealed at the end)

" And there it is! Includes a year of prime with the price of the phone (as revealed at the end)"

- That seems different though to your initial point that the phone itself would be cheap hardware as long as you're tied to a service subscription (Prime) This is the other way around.

Since the year of Prime can be used by existing Prime customers, it seems about the same. If you have Prime already, and plan to renew, buying this phone would only cost you $99 more than not buying it.

Dont forget the contract.

$200 price point is silly for a device that seems to be fine-tuned to make you buy things. They should be selling it at a loss, not charging the same as an iPhone.

I don't mean this in an Apple snarky way but maybe they'll pull an Apple and price it high for a short period of time and then drop the price after the early adopters. That way you can sort of have your cake and eat it too. Buyer's of the phone don't feel 'bad' carrying it around based on it being "of that's that cheap Amazon phone" Avoid the problem the 5C seemed to run into.

Classic price discrimination.

So far there's nothing all that new or earth shattering. (although those no tangle earbuds look nice) I felt like this phone was going to be super tied in to payments but so far no. I wonder if it's a smartphone aimed at the 'rest of us' who are intimidated by iPhone and Android?

Numerous cameras used to track user's viewpoint, allowing fake (but good) 3D.

the dynamic perspective seem to be new, seems to be using 4 infrared cameras on the 4 corners on the front of the phone in order to track the persons head. Not sure how well it would work however.

The earbuds look nice but they are nothing new either. I've seen a few companies do the tangle free flat cable thing.

Intimidated by iPhone?

It's $199 with a 2 year contract with AT&T, meaning it's a $649 phone (now confirmed). It's priced with other 'premium' phones like the iPhone 5S and the Galaxy S5 (both $199 with a 2 year contract, $649 off contract at AT&T). Unfortunately, Amazon's other products like the Kindle Fire are anything but premium hardware and software-wise. On the software side this is partially due to the Amazon-first mentality for all media and partially due to the extremely clunky Amazon UI and app store. Then again, I wouldn't consider Samsung a 'premium' phone software-wise either due to my poor experience with the Galaxy S4's clunky setup after coming form 'pure' Android. It's still far better than the Kindle Fire, though.

No word on the battery. Will this be yet another phone I have to strategically place chargers in my car, office, and home for because it's down to 15% by 2PM?

thank you. who cares about 3D lock screens if it's not even going to make it through a day on a single charge.

Look at all these amazing features....you will need to turn off in case you want to actually use this as a phone....

My thoughts as well. I despise that every new phone can't last a whole day of heavy use without a charge. It is the pits when I'm at a music festival or some other event and my phone starts to die midday. I just need access to my favorite apps and an OK camera, I'd give up almost every feature other than those for stellar battery life. Other features are great but let's focus on battery life.

If it's just an occasional problem, I'd suggest getting one of those USB battery packs. You can get something that will recharge your phone 3 or 4 times for $40.

Buyer's guide: http://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-usb-battery-pack-trave...

"Battery size: 2400mAh. Talk time: up to 22 hours; standby time: up to 285 hours. Video playback: up to 11 hours; audio playback: up to 65 hours."

Those times are about the same as an iPhone 5S.

I can't decide whether Amazon should be credited for trying out new things and pushing technology forward or criticized for their stupid attempts at locking you in to their infrastructure.

Fire TV was the same way. Cool device except that everything that wasn't Amazon was a second class citizen.

Ouch exclusive to AT&T + $199, 2 year contract. Anyone think this is going to sell?

I think it'll do better than the Facebook HTC One, but I otherwise expect that it's going to seriously struggle. Even an uneducated consumer will rapidly realize that they don't have access to Google's apps, or Apple's apps, or even many common third-party apps that they're used to having, and the contract price puts it on par with an iPhone 5S/Samsung S5—i.e., it's got premium pricing, despite its inferior ecosystem.

That said, I have to admit that being able to give my parents a smart phone with 10-second delays to talk to a human is tempting. I've thought of giving them a Fire tablet for the same reason.

What does it say about their UX, that Amazon need to have human assistants one click away? The iPad is so intuitive that toddlers, grandparents, and everyone in between can figure it out in minutes.

Perhaps it says that "we're so confident that the UI is easy to use that we're going to put our money where our mouth is and give you incredibly easy to use live support".

It doesn't take very many minutes in support calls to completely eat any profit Amazon has on a phone.

You make a great point and one I suspect Amazon is betting on. the iPad is so intuitive that some toddlers, grandparents etc can use it. But I also get the sense that the main reason many people aren't using smartphones and tablets is because they find them hard/intimidating. Maybe that's the only vertical left that's greenfields. So it might be a smart idea to hold their hand.

The example use case they gave was turning on some obscure setting like international roaming. Have you seen the iOS Settings app? It is not especially intuitive, IMHO.

Free year of Prime included, worth $99.

Everyone thought Amazon would undercut, but it makes sense that Amazon is targeting high-end flagship phones with the device. They're definitely not messing around. The 3d features are obviously unique, and the camera makes it a serious contender for the 1-device crowd. The Android base gives it an instant familiarity. It remains to be seen whether FireOS is going to be easy to adopt.

I'm disappointed by the AT&T exclusivity, but I actually see good reasons behind it. Amazon is new at phones, and they've had limited success with advertising campaigns. AT&T is still big enough to throw money around, but they're haemorrhaging users shockingly fast. AT&T has an incentive to market Amazon's product, and they should be willing to given the success the iPhone brought them. Amazon has something AT&T wants, and they'll pay for it once with the contract and twice for advertising. AT&T will basically offer Amazon a strong market foothold.

The announcement said the screen was 720p and the product page says 1080p. Was this just a mistake from Bezos?

Here's a link to the Amazon detail page for the Fire Phone: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00EOE0WKQ

"Unlimited Free Photo Storage" is huge.

I would estimate that 80% of my current DropBox capacity is photos alone.

I hope Amazon nails this and forces Apple & DropBox to respond.

EDIT: Nope, I'm wrong; as pointed at below, Apple charges $1/month for unlimited service, whereas Amazon's offering it free.

INCORRECT FORMER COMMENT: Apple has already thrown unlimited photo storage into iOS 8 (http://www.apple.com/ios/ios8/photos/), so I'd say they've responded preemptively. :)

I thought the same thing and almost posted your exact comment, but if you click the second slide, it says:

"iCloud Photo Library helps you make the most of the space available on your iOS device, so you can spend more time shooting pictures and less time managing them. It can automatically keep the original high-resolution photos and videos in iCloud and leave behind lightweight versions that are perfectly sized for each device. You get 5GB of iCloud storage free, and other storage plans will start at $0.99 per month."

So it would appear that Apple is making a more seamless way to store and view all your photos on iCloud rather than on device, but is still charging you if you exceed 5GB worth.

> You get 5GB of iCloud storage free, and other storage plans will start at $0.99 per month.

It’s not unlimited and it’s not free. You have to pay for anything beyond 5GB.

You're not just using Google for backups? (I admit I don't take huge amounts of photos but that's where mine are)

Cost for storing upwards of 200GB of photos?

I think Google offers unlimited photo storage, too, but only up to 8MP resolution.

100GB for $1.99 per month, and a terabyte for $9.99 per month

Flickr offers 1TB for free

They talked a lot earlier in the presentation about how Amazon Prime is an extremely sticky service - they have very little churn. I would imagine that unlimited photo storage will give folks yet another reason why they need to renew their Prime membership.

I am eager to see the tangle free design for earphones via flat cables. I hope it is not a PR stunt.

Context - http://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/img_4425...

You can wrap arbitrary headphones using your hands into a tangle-free design without the aid of a billionaire. It unfolds very easily:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DaXcNzxAB00

I don't bother tying them off (I stop around 0:45), and just bunch it up and stuff it in my pocket. When I pull out my headphones they are never, ever tangled.

A friend of mine has flat earbud cables (has had them for a year or two) and they do indeed not tangle. I don't quite know the physics behind it, but it seems to work.

The head tracking controlled perspective changes in 3D games seems like it'll be awesome.

Do you swing your head or phone about while you play video games? Why do you expect to?

The phone mostly.....

The one mobile game which I have poured a lot of time into is Real Racing 3. Tilting the phone like a steering wheel for analogue driving input is awesome.

Combine that with head tracking to allow analogue acceleration and breaking control by tilting the phone forwards and backwards would be excellent.

On the other axis I can image controlling the view point slightly to allow looking to your left and right, even just checking wing mirrors.

And those thoughts are just about a game which already exists. I can also start to dream about game mechanics which haven't been possible until head tracking......

Not sure why they would only want to sell this in the US. This exclusive deal with ATT ruins any chance of this being successful in this age of contract free phones and the cheap Nexus line.

I would have ordered it instantly at up to $199 carrier-free.

$199 with a 2-year ATT contract? Pfft. No way (and I'm a long-time Prime customer with a FireTV and multiple Kindles).

But you are talking about a $199 phone vs. a $650 phone. The features on those phones are going to be wildly different.

Video predictive caching? I would assume this isn't on the phone, unless they got a sweetheart bandwidth deal with AT&T.

They could cache over wifi (eg sequential tv episodes for binge watchers) and actually decrease use of cellular bandwidth.

Anyone wonders why on earth they (Amazon) don't live stream it? I see only benefits in doing it...

What does $27/month mean? Surely no one would pay $27/month instead of $199 up front.

The $27/month via AT&T Next doesn't lock you into a 2-year service contract.

Actually, the current AT&T Next offering isn't bad, they simply take the full price of the phone and divide by 20 or 24 months.

If you cancel service before the end of the period, you owe the balance of the price of the phone. It's essentially a 0% loan for the phone.

(BTW, the $27/month installment price means the Fire Phone's real price is ~$650)

And the second important thing is that if you are on a 10 GB or higher Mobile Share Value plan, an off-contract smart phone costs you $15 instead of $40.

https://www.att.com/shop/wireless/data-plans.html

So, on Next, you pay $27 per month for the phone, but $25 less for the plan, so $2 more a month or a total of $48. And you need to pay sales tax on the phone, so that's another $50 or so. But the contract plan had to pay $199 up front. So you come out about $100 ahead over the life of the contract.

Thanks. Its the no-contract feature that I missed. That makes perfect sense and lines up with the way T-mobile prices everything right now.

Lots of people pay the $27/month. It's often more convenient and slightly cheaper. Doing the math :

$0 up front + $27/month (phone) + $0 activation (free on AT&T Next) + $65/month (service, 2GB data) * 18 months = $1656 total cost (without taxes)

$199 up front + $40 (one time activation fee, required) + $80/month (phone subsidy + identical 2GB plan) * 18 months = $1679 total cost (without taxes).

If you paid the $199 upfront, then after 18 months, your still on contract and can't upgrade for another four months and you paid $20 extra.

If you paid $0 down and $27 a month, you saved (an admittedly tiny amount) of money, and you can also upgrade six months earlier at no extra cost.

A lot of cell phone purchasers can't front the $199 up front. The amount of money you need to plonk down on day one is a big factor for a lot of people (usually people with low incomes). Of course, generally these "0-down" types of pricing models are basically scams that prey on people who can't pay large sums up-front.

It's a shady business model that, unfortunately, works well for the businesses that use it.

There are a lot of people who live paycheck to paycheck.

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