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Amazon Launch Event
- Antiquarian 12y agoIs there anything discernible in the reflection on the hipster-glasses at 0:42? ... enhance ...
- colinbartlett 12y agohttp://i.imgur.com/oe2f1pP.png http://i.imgur.com/oe2f1pP.png Tough to see much, but you do see a shadow of her hand and the proportions indicate to me a tablet-sized device not a phone.
- jfoster 12y agoWe still can't rule out a phone, though. For this type of video they don't necessarily use the real device. Another possibility (as suggested by the questions in the form) is that it's a sensor applicable to many types of devices.
- tansey 12y agoLooks like they're moving around a 3D cube on a tablet screen.
- domas 12y agoIt's definitely a phone in the video: http://i.imgur.com/MgBcxMw.png http://i.imgur.com/MgBcxMw.png You can see its top at the bottom of the photo.
- encoderer 12y agoClassic geek moment. Enhance the reflection! ...When all you have to do is look down and see the whole damn thing.
- User9812 12y agoYep, it's definitely a phone sized device, and you can see her scrolling with her finger in the reflection, so it's a touch screen. Now, what's actually unique about it that separates it from the millions of similar devices, I guess we'll have to wait and see. Perhaps the display stays square to your head? I mean, if you're viewing the screen at a slight angle, it skews the perspective to look straight? http://i.imgur.com/ExL1OqV.png http://i.imgur.com/ExL1OqV.png There's a quick photoshop of a phone at an angle and the display square. Now, you wouldn't purposely use the phone at such an extreme angle, but when you're typing, playing games, in bed, etc, it might make things easier to use. Fairly straightforward, it would just be tracking the location of your head, and adjust the perspective of the display.
- drcode 12y agoclever idea, but that just seems like a really small, inconsequential feature to play up that much...
- quink 12y ago¿Porque no los dos?
- nickvanhoog 12y agoHow about just "the glasses"?
- ColinWright 12y agoSplit discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7847951 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7847951
- lominming 12y agoEveryone is tilting their head or the device. Definitely something related to a 3D interface, but it has to be something more that just a 3D interface.
- rikkus 12y agoFrom the head moving and what they're saying about it, it's definitely this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2K39Q9zvQoE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2K39Q9zvQoE
- danvayn 12y agoYes, I would definitely use this often.
- eob 12y agoI'm going to get downvoted for this, but this video is hilarious when you imagine they're trying out some sort of sex toy attachment. Just watch it again with that in mind.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- fractalsea 12y agoThat works too well. I found the comment "that's pretty damn intuitive" the most funny with the image of it being a sex toy in mind.
- schwap 12y ago"I would use that alot" Caused me to actually crack up.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- RexRollman 12y agoI think this might be the first time I ever LOL'ed from something I've read on HN. Good call.
- Alex_MJ 12y agoI kind of suspect Amazon knew this when they were making it. Remember their free-publicity drones segment on 60 minutes that made Amazon Prime go apeshit right before Black Friday? They've got a very clever marketing department. Furthermore, this is exactly the kind of thing that would (a) Drive traffic that otherwise wouldn't care to a promo for a video about another goddamn smartphone (b) Convince whoever watches it, even if purely for entertainment value, that this is a totally different phone and worth paying attention to (like the opposite of when I keep ignoring Samsung or whoever's "THE NEXT BIG THING" every two months...yeah, whatever, the screen is a different size or something) If they just announced "we're making a smartphone guys - here's a video!" it wouldn't be nearly as huge. I wouldn't be surprised if this gets on the front page of reddit purely because it's hilarious when you misinterpret it. Hell, worked on me.
- Zelphyr 12y agoWhat video is everyone talking about?
- pnachbaur 12y agoThere is a video under "June 18 | Seattle" on the linked page
- Zelphyr 12y agoWeird. I don't see it. Could be Ghostery or some similar ad blocking plugin I guess.
- uses 12y agoYeah I have "click to play plugins" enabled on chrome and didn't see it until I saw these comments, and manually enabled plugins.
- esbonsa 12y agoYou don't need any add-ons to selectively block flash nowadays on Firefox... Menu - Add-ons - Plugins - Flash "Ask to activate" instead of "Always activate"
- niico 12y agoThey will be launching their smartphone. Source: http://bgr.com/2014/04/15/amazon-smartphone-photos-specs-kindle-phone-exclusive/ http://bgr.com/2014/04/15/amazon-smartphone-photos-specs-kin...
- Karunamon 12y agoThat would match from the way you can see people in the video holding their hands.
- miralabs 12y ago"he device houses an additional four front-facing cameras that work with other sensors to facilitate the software’s 3D effects." I wonder how the battery life of this will be like.
- jarkarj 12y agoI was thinking that 4 cameras seems a little excessive when you only really need one for head tracking. But maybe it has 4 and uses one at a time - switching between them when/if one is covered.
- nathannecro 12y agoWell, you need only need 1 camera for lateral tracking, but I believe you need at least 2 cameras for depth tracking. Possibly a third for eye tracking and a fourth for Skype.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- Nogwater 12y agoTalk of amazon phone with multiple cameras: http://www.cnet.com/news/rumored-amazon-phone-six-cameras-summer-launch/ http://www.cnet.com/news/rumored-amazon-phone-six-cameras-su... and: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6485698 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6485698 Going back more than a year: http://www.cnet.com/news/amazon-said-to-be-developing-3d-smartphone/ http://www.cnet.com/news/amazon-said-to-be-developing-3d-sma...
- sbashyal 12y agoI am specially intrigued by "Do you have machine learning experience?" question in the developer section for the invitation request.
- mmanfrin 12y agoPrediction: launching a Kindle Phone for a $30/m phone plan, free data for Kindle/Amazon streaming.
- swang 12y agoHmm methinks you did not watch the video...
- tannerc 12y agoJudging by all of the head tilting in the video, perhaps something with 3D or "holographic" projection?
- OrwellianChild 12y agoThat would be consistent with previous reports of 3D "sensing" tech on the phone (not sure whether that means gestures, glasses-free 3D screen, or something else). Sources: http://bgr.com/2014/04/22/amazon-smartphone-specs-details-kindle-phone-exclusive/ http://bgr.com/2014/04/22/amazon-smartphone-specs-details-ki... http://bgr.com/2014/05/01/amazon-smartphone-photos-kindle-phone-images-exclusive/ http://bgr.com/2014/05/01/amazon-smartphone-photos-kindle-ph...
- k-mcgrady 12y agoIt's rumoured to be a phone with a 3D display - but I don't see why I would want that. It's certainly a cool USP but it seems like gimmick that will quickly lose attention. Maybe they've found a use for it I haven't thought of but I don't know anyone who has been requesting a 3D display on their phone.
- 6cxs2hd6 12y ago> I don't know anyone who has been requesting a 3D display on their phone. Well, 7 years ago I didn't know anyone who was asking to eliminate physical keyboards from phones. I'm less skeptical of the merit of the idea (whatever exactly it turns out to be), than I am of Amazon's first generation implementation (based on owning 1st gen versions of Kindle eReader and Kindle Fire).
- rtpg 12y agoThe thing is 3d screens have been a tested quantity (both on things like the 3DS and on a lot of phones in Japan). It's been far from a hit.
- tachion 12y agoSo does the phones without physical keyboards, using touch pens, until Apple figured out how to eliminate that damn pen and just use fingers and here we are today. I give it a benefit of doubt - I doubt that what has been done to 3d displays is all what can be done ;)
- zeroDivisible 12y agoI wouldn't mind it, assuming that this would have no effect on the already bad battery life of those.
- gojomo 12y agoThe illusion that the display is a window into another parallel 3D world might prove very useful once developers & users know how to exploit it. Tilting the phone to see 'under' the current foreground might be a way to show next-messages, pending-notifications, etc. Add a backside display, and perhaps you'd flip the phone for 'details' - and the eye-tracking ensures that usually, only one side is powered at a time. Or what if each side of a telepresence-connection is being live-mapped with technology like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ghgbycqb92c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ghgbycqb92c Then, even without a head-worn VR display, your handheld phone/tablet can serve as a roaming-camera into the remote space.
- Fuzzwah 12y agoAll the head moving made me think back to Jonny Lee's wiimote headtracking 3d display. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd3-eiid-Uw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd3-eiid-Uw Perhaps Amazon have an eye tracking system which can do the same with out the need for the user to be wearing infra red leds?
- clarky07 12y agoYeah I was coming here to say the same thing. Seems like it is definitely doing some sort of motion tracking.
- tseabrooks 12y agoI'm actually thinking this is either "Kinect" on a tablet and/or eye tracking. The application specifically talks about additional sensors. being used to build apps. I'm not sure head tracking is a strong use case for additional apps. But something with the depth of MS's Kinect or eye tracking could be really interesting.
- unreal37 12y agoI've never seen that video before, so thanks for posting it. Yes, the head movement in the Amazon video makes it look like head tracking/perspective changes built in to the device. But what for?
- caseyf7 12y agoLooks like it will be a lot like this: http://www.getmoju.com/ http://www.getmoju.com/
- tachion 12y agoI hope not - an application that does something that looks almost like video already available to any modern phone and requires motion to be displayed? Hardly worth the launch event, hype, marketing money&effort and doesnt seem any way revolutionary or cool to me. But of course, I might be absolutely wrong about it and that's cool too.
- 0x0 12y agoThe questions here in the form certainly give some hints about what it's about: "Are you interested in developing apps utilizing a new type of sensor?" "Describe an innovative way in which you have used gyroscopes, accelerometers, or other device sensors in your app development."
- Theodores 12y agoThe clue is in the title: it is the drone! Those people are just watching some wild footage of it on some tablet, the teaser is there to just throw people off the scent, gyroscopes etc: must be the drone. Should I place a bet on that or would I be best to go with the 3d eye-tracking kindle-phone?
- aidenn0 12y agoYou do know that most (maybe all) modern smartphones and tablets have accelerometers in them, which are often gyroscope based, right?
- reitzensteinm 12y agoFurther, the mass production of such parts due to their inclusion in phones is essentially the reason why inexpensive drones are viable today. Chris Anderson famously called it the peace dividend of the smartphone wars.
- Theodores 12y agoHumour bypass! Whilst everyone else is 'how high?' jumping to the latest Amazon hype event as if it really mattered, I regurgitate their last 'hype event' and get a wave of downvotes with people thinking I must be that retarded to think it really is the drone. Do you have things like comedy in America or is everything that bad it has to be serious about everything nowadays?
- lordlarm 12y agoLink to video: https://d3d73dg4t65dlz.cloudfront.net/videos/customer_tease_0603.mp4 https://d3d73dg4t65dlz.cloudfront.net/videos/customer_tease_... (it was in the source-code)
- rglover 12y agoAt this rate, one day I'm going to buy a house on Amazon.
- jwilliams 12y agoPause at just past 0:41. Woman is wearing a blue top. You can see a very-much phone like device, with a headphone jack.
- AVTizzle 12y agoParaphrasing a friend from Amazon: "Man, we have no clue what they're going to announce. Whatever it is has been completely black-boxed. I'm guessing it might be a 3D projecting phone, but that's based on exactly nothing. Plus, I'm not invited, so... hah."
- mdelias 12y agoSummoning user?id=nilium Please make your wallpaper [1] work for this phone. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7843664 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7843664
- swalsh 12y agoIf there's anything i've learned through the years, if something is actually industry breaking revolutionary... they have no need to hype the launch. It'll get the press after the event. I'm reminded of the time Opera "Changed the internet"
- mik3y 12y ago3D effects are neat, but I'm betting Amazon is more excited to get a high fidelity eyetracker in your phone. Instant heatmaps, new types of ad creatives, new ad conversion modes, ...
- yanokwa 12y agoIt's a phone. You can see the top of the device in their promo video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erUZQ9GK0sE&t=41 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erUZQ9GK0sE&t=41. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BpVCE7aCMAA_DDJ.png:large https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BpVCE7aCMAA_DDJ.png:large has a tweaked screen capture.