What Is Google Android?

On June 18, 2014, Amazon announced the new Fire phone. This is Amazon's first phone, although they'd been rumoured to be working on one for years. Why a phone? Why is this phone different? Let's take a look.

Dynamic Perspective

One of the hallmark new features of the Fire phone is dynamic perspective. What is this? It's actually an incredibly sophisticated system that involves four cameras and face detecting software. What it does is it creates a few basic interface effects:

• Immersive Apps

Games and apps can be written to take advantage of the angle of the phone and face position to make the illusion of glasses-free 3-D, among other effects. It actually works better than the glasses-free 3-D technologies I've previewed. The effect is really cool, and when combined with a game, it makes for a more intense experience. Try not to miss your bus stop.

• Gesture Control

Some phones and apps have already experimented with gesture control, such as turning a phone over in order to mute the ringer during meetings. This goes beyond this. Because it relies on the four cameras to detect face positioning, it can do things like scroll text by tilting the screen, tilt to show song lyrics in Amazon Music, or swivel for other actions. This is a powerful feature, but one that is also likely to annoy users as they get used to the new system.

• Enhanced Carousel 

The Carousel is the equivalent to the Android home screen and how the Kindle Fire  navigates through favorites and recent apps and docs. In the Fire phone's enhanced Carousel, the apps are more intelligent and can show widget-like information without requiring that you actually launch the app. This will bring the Fire product line a little closer to the advanced features offered by modern Android devices.

Fire and Android

Modern Android devices? Wait, what? The Kindle Fire, Fire TV, and Fire phone all run on Android. But not the Android most of us know and love. Google offers Android as an open source platform. However, Google charges for all the Google portions of Android. So if you want your Android phone to check Gmail or play YouTube videos, you have to pay Google for the honour.
Amazon has opted not to do this. They took the very basic source code and then developed their software and sophisticated hardware and brand new interface around it. The disadvantage is that there's no Google on it. The advantage is that they can still do quite a lot of leveraging of Android apps, most of which will play just fine on the Fire phone.

The Big Downsides

• Fire Hates Google

As mentioned, Amazon isn't paying Google, so there's no Google on this phone. No YouTube videos, no Google Play store, no Gmail, and no Google Now. And you won't be able to install those things later. You play in Amazon's walled garden, the Amazon App store. While Amazon has been working very hard to build up the offerings in their app store, it is still smaller than Google Play. Furthermore, if you own a regular Android phone, you're not restricted from just installing apps from both stores. Now if you like the Amazon Fire and don't feel like it's restricting your app access, you already use Amazon Prime for movies, and you listen to Amazon Music, this is probably not a terrible thing.
PS - if you think that you can just buy the phone and then root it to install Google or other apps, you're probably going to have to wait a bit for developers to catch up to this particular phone. While there will probably be custom ROMs available (modified versions of Android that can be installed on hacked phones), it will probably take a while. That's assuming that Amazon has not added measures to prevent people from rooting the phone. The hardware features of the phone with the four cameras mean that a modified version will take a while and may defeat the whole point of owning the phone.

• AT&T Exclusive

At least for now. The phone ships on July 25. Pre-orders are available either through Amazon or AT&T. A 32GB version is available for $199 with a two year contract, and a 64GB will set you back $299. It looks like a non-contract version is $650. Amazon is tossing in a year of Amazon Prime membership as part of their introductory promotion. Current Amazon Prime customers get a 12 month extension of their current subscription. (This is likely to change over time, so double check that the offer is still valid before

Bottom Line

has a really interesting introductory offer. The interface offers some fascinating features. But you probably shouldn't be the first in line to buy one. The 3-D interface isn't enough to overcome the disadvantages of having limited app offerings and being stuck exclusively in Amazon's walled garden and AT&T's network. Give it a year, and maybe we'll all want one. Or maybe we'll be onto the next big thing. 

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• What Is Google Android?