Hot on the heels of a leak that offered up our first look at Amazon’s oft-rumored smartphone, a new report claims to have additional details on the software that’ll power the device.
Previous rumors have suggested that the Amazon smartphone will use four front-facing cameras to track the position of a user’s face and alter the perspective of the user interface. Now BGR says that Amazon will heavily utilize this feature in many of its own apps to make it easier to navigate menus.
One example of the way that the Amazon smartphone will use its cameras is tilting to reveal more information in apps. For example, it’s said that tilting the phone while in the Amazon video store will reveal a movie’s IMDB ratings on top of its thumbnail. The report also suggests that tilting the phone while viewing products in Amazon’s store could bring up alternate views.
This tilt feature is also reportedly able to replace the traditional menu button. Tilting the phone left or right will allegedly bring up menus and the like in apps, such as a X-Ray menu in the Kindle app or a camera roll in the messaging app. Meanwhile, tilting the phone up or down could offer other functionality, like turning to the next or previous page in a Kindle book.
Finally, Amazon is said to be prepping a unique feature for its phone’s rear camera as well. Users will purportedly be able to capture images of signs and other objects with print on them and have the phone recognize text and covert it into a digital note.
These rumored gesture and tilt controls sound like an interesting way to navigate a phone, and it’s good to hear that Amazon might be planning to take full advantage of the multiple front-facing cameras on its smartphone. However, it sounds like it could be difficult to remember what action these different tilts will perform in the various apps. I’m sure that some users would get the hang out them eventually, but others might be overwhelmed by all of the gestures available.
Do you think that Amazon’s tilt-focused user experience sounds good?
Via BGR
