Amazon is reportedly working on a successor range of smartphones, currently codenamed ‘Ice’, that will look to improve upon the rather poorly received Fire Phone, released in 2014.
- Amazon Fire Phone review
The Fire Phone was subsequently discontinued in 2015 as it couldn’t compete with the likes of the iPhone and Android phones in Western markets. It’s thought the Ice phones will be sold in countries such as India instead, and at least one phone should make it to market before the end of 2017.
Rather than rely on Amazon’s own Fire operating system, the Ice phones will run on Android and will even make use of Google’s own email and Play Store services, as well as Google Assistant, as opposed to Amazon Alexa.
However, the person testing the phone has said Alexa could make its way onto the phone by the time it’s released. Alexa-powered speakers and the Echo aren’t sold in India, so having an Alexa-powered phone wouldn’t make a lot of sense.
One of the Ice phones is said to be in testing and has a display between 5.2 and 5.5-inches, a 13-megapixel camera, a Snapdragon 435 chip with 2GB of RAM and 16GB of onboard storage. There is also expected to be a fingerprint sensor on the back.
No other features have been rumoured just yet, but it’s likely the Ice phones won’t have nearly as many intuitive features onboard, such as Dynamic Perspective, gesture controls and Mayday support for live help.
The Amazon Ice Phone is expected to cost around Rs (Rupees) 6,000, which is around $93, or £72. Clearly the Ice Phone is going after the flagships of the world.
[“Source-ndtv”]
