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Amazon is taking another shot at the smartphone arena, according to a report by Gadget 360. After failing to impress consumers with its Fire Phone, the retail giant is adopting a new strategy to have a better chance with customers. The new phone, rumored to be called Ice, will have the full lineup of Google Play Services including the Play Store and support for all Android apps.
The report also notes that the Ice phone will deviate from Fire Phone in various ways from the software to the hardware. Also, it will focus on emerging markets such as India. It ought to be known that the Fire Phone was focused on the US market. To suit the emerging markets, the phone is rumored to have specs that match it. The specs include a screen size of between 5.2 and 5.5 inches, 2GB of RAM, 16 GB of storage space, a Snapdragon 435 processor, and a fingerprint sensor mounted on the back of the phone. Always churning out budget devices, Amazon is said to put the price of the Ice phone at just $93. This price may, however, change at launch.
With smartphone manufacturers being focused on their digital assistant software, it is a downside to note that the Ice phone may not show with Amazon’s Alexa built in. However, given that the report is but a speculation of the features of the phone, Alexa may make it to the final product.
The original Fire Phone was a failure owing to many different reasons. Some of them include the fact that it could only work with AT&T in the United States, did not run all Google Play Services and was based on a very weird version of the Android operating system.
Even after Amazon cut the prices a few weeks after the launch of the phone, the reception from customers was poor. With the Ice-Phone, Amazon will be able to offer emerging markets a product that could herald its entry into the smartphone market.
