Five things you need to know about Amazon's new 3-D phone

Amazon unveiled its Fire Phone on Wednesday, a high-end handset boasting “breakthrough technologies” and a move aimed at challenging market leaders Apple and Samsung.

The smartphone, a first for Amazon, was unveiled by founder Jeff Bezos at a launch event in Seattle. Said Bezos: “Fire Phone puts everything you love about Amazon in the palm of your hand – instant access to Amazon’s vast content ecosystem."

Facts about the Fire Phone

3-D

It's a 3-D phone, which means it displays 3-D images and maps and also supports 3-D gaming, but this isn't a world first. Brands like Sharp, LG and HTC have released phones enabled with 3-D. As Mashable points out, having 3-D features doesn't usually mean a phone will be more popular. 

Dynamic

One of two wow factors for the Fire Phone is its "dynamic perspective". Acccording to CNET, it allows users to scroll through web pages just by tilting the phone. Amazon described the feature as using a sensor system “to respond to the way you hold, view, and move Fire, enabling experiences not possible on other smartphones". 

Firefly

The other thing that'll make your jaw drop is the Firefly feature (see video above). Through its camera, the phone is able to recognise "millions of products", bar codes, phone numbers, web and e-mail addresses and "lets you take action in seconds", for example buy products or create a music playlist. 

Unlimited photo storage

While other phone companies (Apple) and apps (Dropbox) offer free but limited storage, Amazon is promising its Fire Phone users unlimited storage for their photos on the company's cloud storage service. 

Unfortunately ...

As of now, Amazon has only announced plans to sell its device exclusively through US telco AT&T. It will officially be in stores July 25. 

Sources: AFP, Mashable, CNET