What’s Inside Amazon’s New Smartphone?

Though Amazon doesn’t plan to lift the veil on its smartphone projects until later this year, BGR has been on a photo-sharing, exclusive-leaking rampage of coverage of the whole thing. And as of today, even more key details have been publicized.

Naturally, these new details come courtesy of BGR, who continues to post details seemingly week-after-week. The site has “exclusively learned several additional details about the heavily customized Android software that powers Amazon’s smartphone,” some of them being a bit hard to believe — but fascinating nonetheless.

BGR’s “multiple trusted sources” claim that the device will have several cameras, sensors, and software changes to alter the conventional interaction a user will have with it. Specifically, four low-power infared lenses will be used for head-tracking, foreseeably for uses like pausing a video when the user looks away from the screen.

But more fascinating is the prospect of built-in 3D effects in the device through this four-camera system, which will manifest in “several stock Amazon apps as well as some third-party apps” that you can download from Amazon’s app store.

On top of these effects, users will have new ways to manipulate and control the phone, such as new gesture controls like tilting to navigate through information, negating the need for touch. It can more specifically be used in calendar and email apps, where tilting will reveal labels beneath icons, or will slide Yelp reviews of restaurants into view as you tilt your phone while using a mapping app. This tilt-factor can also make operating larger devices more comfortable.

If you’re viewing a movie on Amazon’s video store, a tilt to one side will reveal IMDB ratings for the film. Or, while browsing products on the Amazon Store app, you can lean to one side to see peeks of more product shots.

Traditional menu buttons are apparently absent on this phone, but can be accessed with a tilt as well. Quite quirky.

Outside of experimental gestures, the report concludes with a hint at some potentially innovative new software additions. Optical Character Recognition (OCR), could allow the user to take pictures of signs or text out in the world, and convert it into a note or string of text for use in other apps. Sounds cool, right?

We’ll have to wait and see how much of this information holds true when Amazon reveals their work later this season. Until then, keep it locked to BestTechie for the latest.