CNET News - Amazon introduces the Fire Phone, its first smartphone
CNET News - Amazon introduces the Fire Phone, its first smartphone
2014-06-18
can we build a better phone for Amazon
Prime members well I'm excited to tell
you that the answer is yes start with
some of the basics this phone is
gorgeous I can't wait for you to get
your own hands on it and look at it put
a huge amount of effort into the
industrial design it's elegant and
refined uses premium materials
rubberized spray and gorilla glass on
both sides we have CNC aluminum milled
buttons they're three times as precise
as the plastic buttons that others often
use steel connectors so you won't get
that USB wobble that everybody hates and
we obsessed over the chamfer of the USP
character so that the cord will slide in
easily what about the size it's 4.7
inches absolutely gorgeous display we
built models everywhere from 4.3 inches
to 5.5 inches we've picked 4.7 as the
perfect size for one-handed use we
obsessed over outdoor viewing 519 it's
this is an industry-leading brightness
we put in a circular polarizer so that
even with your sunglasses on you can use
this phone in both portrait and
landscape mode what about under the hood
we do a lot of things with our smart
phones these days and you need a lot of
power under the hood quad-core 2.2
gigahertz processor beefy coprocessor
for graphics and 2 gigabytes of RAM make
sure it's fast and fluid our phones are
also our primary cameras and we put a
huge amount of attention and energy into
making this the best camera
13 megapixels a super-fast
2.0 lens an optical image stabilization
that's not what you want but that's what
we get too often this is what you want
crisp beautiful photo optical image
stabilization tiny little electric
motors on the lens that adjust the lens
100 times a second you're seeing it here
in super slow motion and they counteract
that natural hand trimmer that all
humans have
here's some of the results that's
unretouched straight out of the phone
with that beautiful photo this one same
thing gorgeous let me show you a
comparison here we've got Samsung on the
Left iPhone on the right and the fire in
the middle let's zoom in on this you can
see look at the sky look at the sharp
edges on the skyscrapers and compare it
to the Samsung and the iPhone there's
another thing to make photography great
on this phone who gave you a button you
can press that launches the camera
wherever you happen to be you can be in
the middle of an email you can be on
your lock screen press that button BAM
the cameras up press it again and you're
just taking a picture and we're
including unlimited storage for your
photos on the Amazon Cloud we think
sound is important on a phone we added
dual stereo speakers Dolby Digital Plus
virtual surround we've got flat cables
on our earbuds with magnets that clasp
them together and premium earbuds we're
including them in the box
they're not an accessory you have to
purchase all right--so services matter -
it's not just the hardware let's take a
look at that
video matters every passing year and
month we can see this people are using
their phones more and more to watch
video ESPN HBO go Netflix Hulu Plus
anything you want to watch about music
phones are primary way to listen to
music we've got tens of millions of
songs you can buy we have x-ray for
music so you can say synchronize lyrics
and just last week we launched prime
music your library is now a million
songs bigger than it was last week and
we've got all the apps you want there -
Spotify Pandora
I heart you sick enjoy I think you'll be
unsurprised to learn that we lavished
attention on this phone for reading up
the Kindle Store millions of books to
choose from by far the largest ebook
store in the world five hundred thousand
exclusives and the Kindle owners lending
library hundreds of magazines and
newspapers and comixology looks terrific
on this phone in fire it's gonna be $199
with a two-year contract or thank you or
the $27 a month with the next program
the Ralph's was just talking about and
it's not these are the prices you might
expect for a 16 gigabyte model but we're
making our model 32 gigabytes for the
same price and pre-order today and it
ships July 25th you won't have to wait
long one more touch this one isn't that
small we're also kicking things off with
12 months of Amazon Prime included
you
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