Guest Jeff Causey Posted April 22, 2014 Posted April 22, 2014 With so many smartphones on the market, it is becoming increasingly difficult for a company to distinguish their device from others just based on a leap forward with hardware specs. More companies are turning to customizations of the operating system to enhance how users interact with a device. We already saw Motorola do this with some of the unique features they incorporated into the Moto X last year. Amazon appears to have figured out this same strategy as their forthcoming entry into the smartphone market uses a combination of sensors and customizations to Android to produce some unique interface improvements. As we know, Amazon is planning to include several cameras in their new smartphone that will be used to track the position of a user’s head. This information will be used to generate some 3D effects. New information suggests Amazon plans to also use this information, along with other sensor data, to change the way users interact with their device. Several of these effects involve the display of information based on the tilt of the phone. For instance, in the email and calendar apps, when a user is presented with an icon with no label, the phone can be tilted to display information about what the icon does. Similarly, when viewing a location like a restaurant in the maps app, ratings information will pop up when the phone is tilted. A couple other examples include some of Amazon’s own apps like the video store. When a user is scanning movie listings, a tilt of the device can display IMDb ratings. In the Amazon.com app, when viewing an item users can just tilt the device to scroll through images of an item. Amazon’s technology will also be used for things like navigation and access to menus in applications. For example, instead of having to tap on buttons to expose the slide out menu for an app, users can just tilt the smartphone. Another example is in the messaging app where a tilt of the phone can be used to open the gallery of images to insert a photo. Sources say users will also be able to tilt the smartphone on an up/down axis to scroll through long pages like a web page in a browser or pages in a Kindle book. Supposedly Amazon is also including some optical character recognition capabilities baked into the operating system that can be used for things like road signs or business cards. Overall, it appears Amazon is working to reduce the level of tapping and sliding that users have to engage in when using their smartphones, relying more on motion. If you could just tilt your smartphone to navigate menus and access app features, would you consider that an improvement? Do you think other manufacturers will jump on board and follow Amazon’s lead in this area? source: BGR Come comment on this article: New details about Amazon’s smartphone customizations revealed Visit TalkAndroid for Android news, Android guides, and much more! News via TalkAndroid
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