Images of the still unannounced Amazon smartphone surfaced earlier in the month. Those pics detailed a setup that included a handful of front-facing cameras. But while we were able to see those from the pics, the actual style of the handset was disguised with an exterior casing/shell. Perhaps a bit more important were the details about how those cameras on the front would be used to “track the position of the user’s face and eyes in relation to the phone’s display.”
Flash forward till today and it seems we are now getting some details regarding the user interface. These are being shared by BGR who mention Amazon will introduce a “variety of unique gesture controls” and about how the smartphone will make use of tilt gestures.
We’ve been pretty happy with touching and tapping, but in the case of Amazon it looks like they will be using this setup for a few reasons. There was mention of this simply being a “point of differentiation” and also a “way for larger devices such as Amazon’s upcoming 4.7-inch flagship phone to be operated more comfortably with one hand.”
Some examples include the following;
- Using the Kindle app and tilting the phone to the side will open the X-Ray menu.
- A tilt while using the messaging app to compose a new message will open a new panel with the option to insert an image.
- The email and calendar apps are said to have small icons with no labels, and a tilt will show the labels beneath the icons.
Otherwise, there was also mention of the smartphone using optical character recognition (OCR). Bottom line here, BGR has been accurate on Amazon leaks in the past, but we aren’t sure how well the average user is going to adapt to a smartphone relying so heavily on gestures as opposed to what they are used to — tapping.
SOURCE: BGR
