WNA

Amazon plans to sell its own-brand of smartphone with a 4.7″ touchscreen, 6 cameras and a 3D display, according to BGR. The Wall Street Journal reported last week that the company’s cell phone will be announced in June and released in the third quarter.

BGR says Amazon’s first phone will be powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, will include 2GB of RAM and will run a heavily customized version of Google’s Android operating system similar to the version that powers Amazon’s tablets.

The handset’s 4.7″ display will have comparatively low pixel density, featuring 720p HD resolution compared to 1080p HD resolution on many rival devices. But it’s got a 3D display without the need for 3D glasses.

The Amazon phone is rumored to include six cameras. It includes a standard high resolution camera on the back and a medium resolution in the front. In addition, the device is rumored to house an additional four front-facing cameras to facilitate the software’s 3D effects. Situated in each of the four corners on the face of the phone, the infrared cameras track the position of the user’s face and eyes. This allows Amazon’s software to make constant adjustments to alter the perspective of visuals on the screen.

It probably also allows image recognition in lieu of fingerprint readers. 2-D cameras can often be tricked with a picture of a face. Fool-proof identity matching would be necessary for any Amazon transactions.

Computational Photography may be the next big thing.

Core Photonics has developed a family of camera reference designs for single, dual and quad aperture cameras for computational photography. They enable a variety of benefits such as true optical zoom, low profile cameras, high dynamic range, refocusing, gesture control and other features.

Dual, fixed lenses coupled with “computational photography” are expected soon in smartphones. Immersive games could be next.

Amazon is rumored to be readying a second, lower-cost smartphone that will debut at a later time.

Perhaps the Amazon Phone, Facebook Phone and Google Phone could play in new spectrum owned by Dish (at 2.1 GHz) and Google (at 600MHz) with Dish’s 14 million rooftop satellite dishes providing local small-cell coverage. All they need is a tower partner to fill in the blanks.