Amazon Plans Smartphone Comeback More Than a Decade After Fire Phone Flop (reuters.com)
- Reference: 0181059344
- News link: https://mobile.slashdot.org/story/26/03/20/1556216/amazon-plans-smartphone-comeback-more-than-a-decade-after-fire-phone-flop
- Source link: https://www.reuters.com/technology/amazon-plans-smartphone-comeback-more-than-decade-after-fire-phone-flop-2026-03-20/
> As envisioned, the new phone's personalization features would make buying from Amazon.com, watching Prime Video, listening to Prime Music or ordering food from partners like Grubhub easier than ever, the people said. They asked for anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss internal matters. A key focus of the Transformer project has been integrating artificial intelligence capabilities into the device, the people said. That could eliminate the need for traditional app stores, which require downloading and registering for applications before they can be used. Alexa would likely be a core feature but not necessarily the primary operating system of the phone, the people said.
When Amazon launched the Fire Phone in 2014, it aimed to compete directly with offerings from Samsung and Apple. Instead, the device received [2]mixed reviews and failed to impress reviewers, leading Amazon to [3]abandon the effort just over a year later.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/technology/amazon-plans-smartphone-comeback-more-than-decade-after-fire-phone-flop-2026-03-20/
[2] https://mobile.slashdot.org/story/14/07/23/0252245/amazon-fire-phone-reviews-solid-but-overly-ambitious
[3] https://mobile.slashdot.org/story/15/09/09/0021227/amazon-stops-selling-fire-phone
Smartphone failed. Smartphone with bad AI won't! (Score:2)
This is just Amazon assuming that tossing some crappy Alexa + AI on the failed idea from a while ago will create a winning product. I expect to see a lot of failed ideas making a comeback as $failed_idea + AI!
We're all waiting for the announcement of Zune+Copilot.
Re: (Score:2)
At least they should take this opportunity to think of better branding for their phone. "Fire Phone" is a terrible name for any product that contains lithium ion batteries.
However, I don't see how "all AI" is going to work out. Computers were invented because they made predictable, repeatable calculations. That's important for things like safety and security. People aren't going to be happy if their phone hallucinates a custom map giving them driving directions onto the runway of their local airport, or tak
Competition Good (Score:2)
I don't expect this phone to go anywhere. But, hopefully it will add to the competition against each of the other players and keep them innovating and competitive.
Re: (Score:2)
The last semblance of competition in this space was Windows Phone/Mobile, and it ultimately croaked: there was a limit to even Microsoft throwing money at it. This was actually a good alternative - leveraging on the Windows desktop, had a good UI (Metro, while horrendous for Wintel laptops, was great for phones) and some good basic apps, like Office, HERE maps, OneNote,... Only problem: they failed to attract major apps, such as Videocalling apps (WhatsApp arrived pretty late), Uber & Lyft Drive, vari
Doesn't rely on apps? (Score:2)
Wtf does that mean? Will a user have to wait for the "AI" to phone home just to change the screen brightness or wallpaper because there's no settings app? Or are they planning that this AI will somehow supplant user downloaded apps? Well, good luck with that!
Re: (Score:2)
I do think what you're describing will be the future for the most part. We aren't going to be digging through layers of gui menus or doing keyword searches to try to find a setting. You'll just tell it what you want in plain speech and it will do it.
As for the demise of apps could there be a platform based on an AI that knows how to generate information displays and retrieve various information, and each 'app' is just set of prompts for the AI? Not sure. But I'm sure it will be tried.
Is there actually a market for this? (Score:2)
Do people find doing all the things this phone will supposedly be good at actually hard or inconvenient? I'm sure this is primarily an attempt for Amazon to profit off people using their products without feeding into Google and Apples ecosystem.
No fing way (Score:2)
So basically it's going to be a brick every time you've got no internet, also your entire life is going to be on Amazon's servers?
Yeah for me no fricking way thanks but I'll bet a whole herd of sheeple will still buy it for some shiny bauble feature.
Hi Alexa, (Score:2)
Can you please put me through to Claude?
Whoever controls the platforms controls AI (Score:2)
That's because AI has a limitless appetite for training data. So you need to constantly be monitoring what human beings are doing or your training data gets out of date and becomes useless. Try to imagine if you trained an AI on data from say 1970. It wouldn't be terribly useful.
So it's no surprise Amazon is trying to create a smartphone because they need a platform where they can monitor and surveil users and then feed that data into AI models.
And absolutely everyone wants their own AI models becau
amazon phone (Score:2)
If he tries to make it run Vega OS like the firesticks its going to fail. Vega is more of a data collection tool than on OS.
Why support this beast? (Score:2)
[1]Jeff Bezos bets $100B on AI to replace human jobs in warehouses and factories [reuters.com]
[1] https://www.reuters.com/technology/amazon-plans-smartphone-comeback-more-than-decade-after-fire-phone-flop-2026-03-20/
Re: (Score:2)
[1]https://www.indiatoday.in/tech... [indiatoday.in] [corrected link]
[1] https://www.indiatoday.in/technology/story/jeff-bezos-bets-100b-on-ai-to-replace-human-jobs-in-warehouses-and-factories-2884527-2026-03-20